2025 Marian McFadden Memorial Lecture with Timothy Egan

Tickets are not available to the public until Friday, March 7, 2025. Please visit this page to secure your free tickets when they are released.

Timothy Egan, acclaimed writer and veteran chronicler of the American experience will present the 46th Annual Marian McFadden Memorial Lecture at the Madam Walker Legacy Center, 617 Indiana Ave, Indianapolis.

• A limited number of free tickets will be available to the public on Friday, March 7 at 5 p.m. Sign up for a reminder to secure your free ticket when they are released.
  

• This event will be recorded! If you are unable to secure a ticket, please visit The Indianapolis Public Library on YouTube to watch the lecture for up to a week following the event.
• Attendees of the McFadden lecture will receive a code for one free ticket to visit the Indiana Historical Society's "RESIST!" exhibit through April 30, 2025.

Timothy Egan is an acclaimed writer and veteran chronicler of the American experience, whose interests range wide across history and landscape, and into the spiritual realm. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, a popular columnist, and a National Book Award-winning author of eleven books. His most recent book, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped them, tells the story of a murderous conman, the Klan’s rise to power in Indiana in the 1920s, and the woman who led to their downfall. In addition to being a New York Times bestseller, it was a Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction, NPR Best Book of the Year, Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, Chicago Review of Books Best Book of the Year, New York Public Library Best Book of the Year, and Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist. His previous book, A Pilgrimage to Eternity, goes to the core questions of humanity, as Egan follows an ancient pilgrimage route a thousand miles from Canterbury to Rome. It received rapturous reviews and was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020. “Egan is so well-informed he starts to seem like the world’s greatest tour guide,” wrote The New York Times. The book is “impossible to put down,” said The Chicago Tribune.

The Marian McFadden Memorial Lecture Series was established after the Indianapolis Public Library Foundation received a gift from the estate of Marian McFadden, Director of Public Libraries in Indianapolis from 1945-1956. This annual author lecture series, which typically takes place in the spring, was named in her honor.

Learn more about the Marian McFadden Memorial Lecture.

Made possible by Friends of the Library through gifts to The Indianapolis Public Library Foundation.

Host or Publisher Indianapolis Public Library