When Treyanna Moten and Tyson Coe met, they were two incoming freshman balancing new beginnings with a desire to maintain a steady habit of reading good books.
Now, they’re close friends and co-presidents and founders of Beyond the Page, Indiana University’s New Organization of the Year dedicated to providing underrepresented groups with opportunities to appreciate, discuss and share works of literature.
The now-sophomores became friends while taking a course through IU’s Intensive First-Year Seminar program, which the university ended in October 2024, just months after they attended. Moten and Coe attribute many of their close friendships in and out of the club to IFS.
They both loved reading and writing and felt college made it difficult to read as regularly as they had in high school. Over a dining hall meal, they came up with the idea to create a new literary space on campus, one that would focus on the works of Black creatives and other underrepresented authors.
“I feel like in Bloomington specifically ... I don’t know of a lot of places that are for Black people or people of color to read about those types of topics, or those titles, that are by Black authors,” Moten said.
The club was officially founded in fall 2025, and started hosting events around campus this semester, including a book drive that collected over 700 books for Firefly Children & Family Alliance, a nonprofit that provides family resources throughout Indiana.
The book drive, a collaboration with the IU Bloomington chapter of the NAACP, encouraged people to donate banned books during NAACP meetings, as well as other drop-off locations like Morgenstern Books and Café and Forest Residence Hall.
Beyond the Page also worked with Morgenstern to create a book display for Black History Month in February. Coe said the display included the book he’s currently reading, “Notes of a Native Son” by James Baldwin, as well as works by Martin Luther King Jr. and a variety of children’s books.
One of Beyond the Page’s organizational goals for next year is to have more events like “Why Literature is Political,” a group discussion about the connection between politics and literature that both Coe and Moten counted as one of, if not their favorite, events this year.
“I think that was my favorite one as well, because it shows that literature crosses into a lot of different realms,” Moten said.
They also hosted a public speaking workshop and a guest speaker event with Monroe County Council President Jennifer Crossley aimed at exploring how community politics and civic education related to literature.
“A lot of events on campus, people are kind of scared or they might be shy to engage in certain things, especially if it’s something that’s controversial,” Coe said of “Why Literature is Political.” “But I felt like everyone at the event was very much into it, they were very much talking.”
The group has also found success outside of its own sponsored events. On April 8, the six-person executive board attended the awards ceremony for the IU Office of Student Life’s Student Organization Awards, where they took home the prize for IU’s New Organization of the Year.
“It was so surreal,” Moten said. “I feel like everybody was trying to be all nonchalant about their awards, no, we took so many pictures.”
Looking towards next year, Beyond the Page hopes to sponsor “Poetic Justice,” an open-mic style poetry and writing event that shares a name with a cult classic film about a poet starring Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur.
The group’s regular meetings are limited to the executive board for planning purposes, but it posts information about upcoming events on Instagram. Next year, Beyond the Page hopes to reach more people through workshops on topics like media literacy and poetry.
“Everybody likes to think of literature as sitting and reading,” Moten said. “No, to be able to understand and comprehend literature is to be able to understand politics, is to be able to understand education, is to be able to understand even math sometimes.”
