The Hoosier Pen Club is an Indiana-based organization to connect fountain pen collectors from the greater Indiana area and celebrate the joy of fountain pens and ephemera.

About Our Membership

 

We polled members of our Facebook group to see where members are located, and as suspected, we are a diverse group of individuals from across Indiana and surrounding states (Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois). We have seen over the past five years that individuals have driven far (sometimes hours!) from the North, South, East, and West to meet up with with other pen fans.

Because of this broad geographic diversity, we plan to continue hosting meetings in Indianapolis due to its central location. This photo of the map does not include members from more remote states who participate or attend largely through virtual options (as far away as Mexico, Canada, and England!)

  • Katherine Palmisano (she/her)

    CURRENT CO-PRESIDENT
    INDIANAPOLIS, IN

    Somehow, managing a midwest-based club for fountain pen collectors seems wildly on brand for me. Even as a child, I was always collecting things and trying to start or maintain interest groups. My adult life has been characterized by passionate collections, intense hobbies, and lots of “involvement” (see: President of the Pride Alliance, Chair of the Wellbeing Committee, Indiana Delegate for the ACP Leadership Day, etc). As a collector of hobbies and expert on hyperfixation, fountain pens are a perfect fit.

    I am a life-long stationery aficionado and distinctly remember opening and feeling the paper inside of the 3-subject notebooks at Target to find the best texture to avoid smudgy pencil marks. My fountain pen journey began in February 2017 when a medical student turned great friend on my team showed up with a TWSBI. I fell quickly and deeply down the rabbit hole and attended my first pen show in May 2017 (Chicago).

    This hobby has all the things to make it the best hobby - seemingly infinite depth and complexity in the thing we collect (consider vintage pens, repairs, grinding, ink, paper, custom work, etc) and a wildly passionate and engaged community. I fell in love with the fountain pen community even more than I fell for the pens. I have had the immense pleasure of helping run the Hoosier Pen Club for a number of years after the previous leader stepped down, and it has given me so much joy to bring our community together. It is through the HPC that I met my now-spouse Ren, so the HPC now holds an even more precious place for us both!

    I am a physician by day. I am board-certified in Internal Medicine and specialize in hospital medicine, geriatric medicine, and wound care. Ren and I live in Indy with our five cats and one tiny dog where we have a smallish (but growing) vegetable garden and rose bed, more art than walls, and a budding collection of mid-century modern furniture, dishes, and accessories.

    Follow me on Instagram @inkykatwrites

    I infrequently blog at www.inkykatwrites.com

  • Ren Lipstraw (they/he)

    CURRENT CO-PRESIDENT
    INDIANAPOLIS, IN

    As a leftie & lab nerd, I’ve always been on the hunt for the best writing experience. I fell into the world of fountain pens with a Platinum Preppy from Jet Pens in 2018 and expanded collecting slowly to TWSBI, Kaweco and Lamy pens. My experience of the pen community was largely through Reddit in the beginning, and it wasn’t long into collecting that I got some of my first grinds (all through the mail from Kirk of Pen Realm!). I found the Hoosier Pen Club through Katherine - I had been scrolling through fountain pen hashtags on Instagram and noticed one of her posts had Indiana tagged. She told me about the HPC and encouraged me to come to a meeting.

    I attended my first HPC after vaccines made post-quarantine in-person meetings possible, and Katherine and I became fast friends. But it didn’t take long to see there was so much more than a friendship between us. Since joining the HPC, I’ve been to many pen shows, added many pens to my collection, and made many pen friends. So now I have amazing friends AND the love of my life thanks to this incredible hobby! I am not quite the hobbiest that Katherine is, but I do dabble in mechanical keyboards and pen-adjacent and EDC-related hobbies.

    For my “real” job, I am a clinical microbiologist working in project management for clinical trial design in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. I work from home and as such can control the paper I use, so am able to use fountain pens all day for work.

    Follow me on Instagram @inkyrayray

  • Gwen Strickland (they/she)

    JOURNAL CLUB LEADER
    INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

    My special interests are my entire personality, and fountain pens and stationery are no exception to this. I joined the Hoosier Pen Club around 2021/2022 and quickly fell deeply down the rabbit hole. I’ve been a stationery lover for most of my life and always choosy about the pens that I wanted to use. I discovered fountain pens in 2020 when I started having carpal tunnel in both my wrists from lab work. Someone on the internet recommended fountain pens to ease wrist pain from writing, since you don’t have to hold them tightly or press down to write. It all spiraled from there and I couldn’t be happier about it. I started and currently run our journal club, which meets one Saturday a month in Fishers at The Well Coffeehouse.

    For my day job, I work in violence prevention and public health. I have a masters degree in public health with a concentration in epidemiology (thus my social media handle being @gwenmph). My partner and I live in Indianapolis with our little pitbull, Ellie. She is the light of our lives and has my whole entire heart. We are frequent convention-goers for all things anime and comic book related. We have a Dungeons and Dragons campaign going with my partner’s family and a few friends, where my character is a shifter druid whose beast form is an owlbear. I am also into body modification, primarily tattoos and piercings, and anime/manga (my favorite is Hunter x Hunter).