Every registration spot filled for the Ray Bradbury Center's writing workshop Sept. 5 at Indy Type Shop, where Sarah Layden spent two hours on Bradbury's fiction, his methods for breaking writer's block and the case for writing by hand.
The workshop is one event in this year's Festival 451, the Bradbury Center's annual citywide celebration of the humanities. The festival runs monthly programs honoring Ray Bradbury, who received a Pulitzer Prize special citation in 2007 and wrote more than 400 stories and nearly 50 books across genres.
This year's title, "The Illustrated City," marks the 75th anniversary of "The Illustrated Man," Bradbury's 1951 story collection about the consequences of technological progress.
Layden, an associate professor of English at IU Indianapolis, told participants the point of the exercises was to get them writing in their own voice.
"A big thing is helping anybody who comes to one of these events, helping them figure out 'what's a way I can benefit from this?' The activities we have planned are going to translate this in a way that is useful to them. The idea is that you as the unique filter, you as the person with individual experiences, you are going to create a really unique thing," said Layden. "And that's what creative writing is all about, is just figuring out, how can I make this mine? How can I make this sound like me?"
The session mixed reading aloud, silent reading, group discussion and freewriting. Layden built the discussion around word association, a method Bradbury used himself. Participants read "The Last Night of the World" and "The Veldt," both from "The Illustrated Man," then wrote down the words each story brought to mind in five categories: abstract emotion, person, place, thing and image.
The Bradbury Center and genesis, the student literary magazine at IU Indianapolis, have partnered since the center opened in Indianapolis in 2020. Jason Aukerman, director of the center, said the workshops once drew a fraction of the crowd.
"The turnout itself I think speaks volumes to its importance. We've gone from having just a handful of people at those workshops," said Aukerman.
The festival's stated mission is to promote reading, and new international results give organizers something to point to. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released the 2025 round of its Programme for International Student Assessment on Sept. 8. More than 760,000 15-year-olds across 91 countries and economies took the test. Average reading scores across OECD countries fell 28 points between 2015 and 2025, the lowest the program has recorded, and one in five students is now a low performer in reading, mathematics and science, up from 16% in 2022.
"In many respects, I fear that we're living in the world that Bradbury warned us about," said Aukerman. "And we wanted to raise awareness of this with the festival."
Teenagers are also adopting AI tools quickly. About 64% of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 say they have used an AI chatbot, and roughly three in 10 use one daily, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 1,458 teens conducted Sept. 25 to Oct. 9, 2025.
The Bradbury Center is set to open a new space at the School of Education on the IU Indianapolis campus in mid-October. genesis, meanwhile, is building "Avenue," a national literary magazine launching in the spring semester. The magazine is accepting nonfiction, fiction, poetry, screenwriting and comics submissions from enrolled students this semester.
"Our campus has not had a national literary journal in its history. And a lot of universities our size have something like that, and so that was just sort of a gap that we saw. This is something that we could provide, and it could be a great way to kind of harness the literary community in Indianapolis, and then beyond, too, because we want to make sure we get submissions from people outside of the city and state," said Layden.
A citywide common read of "The Illustrated Man," organized by Phaedra Corso, IU Indianapolis vice chancellor for research, runs through the festival. The final event is Nov. 10 at the Indiana Historical Society.
Festival 451 continues through November with writing workshops, a film screening, comedy shows and multilingual readings. The next event is a screening of the film adaptation of "The Illustrated Man" on Sunday at Kan-Kan Cinema & Bar, followed by a discussion. Attendees will receive free copies of the book.
The full schedule is on the Ray Bradbury Center website.
Cristina Bueno is a senior double majoring in anthropology and journalism and a writer for The Campus Citizen. She is passionate about reporting challenging stories and making a difference in the world with her storytelling.
Sophie Barker (she/her) is a sophomore majoring in history with a minor in literature and a certificate in museum studies. She can typically be found reading, listening to music, drinking something sweet or binge-watching "RuPaul's Drag Race."
Making space to create: Why Herron’s National Portfolio Day belongs to the whole campus
By Sarah Pinckard | Sept. 10Herron School of Art and Design will host National Portfolio Day on Saturday, giving prospective students a chance to present their work to art and design schools from across the country accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. The event runs like a college fair, with students meeting representatives from the schools they choose and looking for the place they fit as an emerging artist.
At the Tone fills a 34th Street garage gallery with "I'm Being Serious ..."
By Zeid Alsalloum | Sept. 9A plush toy stitched with the words "believe me" sits along one wall. Across the room, a bright pink plaster torso of a female figure asks about consent through a wooden speech bubble. The pieces read as childlike at first. A longer look turns them toward sexuality, womanhood and identity.
Today is Vulture Awareness Day. Here's why Indiana farmers aren't celebrating.
By Devin Bates | Sept. 5International Vulture Awareness Day, observed the first Saturday in September, was established in 2006 by the Hawk Conservancy Trust of England and the Endangered Wildlife Trust's Birds of Prey Programme of South Africa. The day exists to draw attention to a group of birds whose diet tends to keep them off most people's list of animals worth saving.
