By Janice Byrne
The 2017 calendar for Hemingway events is not yet complete. Nevertheless a few interesting items have been scheduled for this year. First was the Modern Language Association session “Hemingway and Imagism” held in Philadelphia this January. Next came the Key West to Havana boat race that began on January 22 and ended on February 3. The race consisted of four parts over the course of two weeks. While not particularly related to Hemingway biography, it does remind fans of Harry Morgan’s trips along the same route in To Have and Have Not.
As for future events, the Oak Park Hemingway group is holding their annual Writing Workshop on February 2, 9, 16 and 23 under David Berner’s leadership. While nothing else appears in February, there is a March first deadline for papers on Hemingway’s works and biography to be presented at the January 2018 Modern Language Association in New York. That is only two days before the Moscow, Idaho, Hemingway Festival sponsored by the University of Idaho (March 3-4). The event is open to the public and is in honor of the PEN Hemingway Award given at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library each spring. This year PEN Hemingway will be April 2. Also in April (6 through 8) the University of Louisiana at Lafayette will host the symposium “Hemingway in the Global South.”
The University of Arkansas at Piggott will sponsor a literary trip to Cuba on May 12 through 19. The group represents one of several long-term offerings of the Pfeiffer Home Museum. Similar trips for scholars (and now some also for the general public) are offered from time to time by several tour companies. Most include a donation to an organizing Hemingway agency.
As one might suspect, come June and July, things really begin to heat up. In Paris the Left Bank Writers Retreat runs from June 11-17 while the sixteenth International Colloquium Ernest Hemingway in Havana will meet June 15 through 18. Sponsored by the Finca Viga and the National Council Heritage, it is a premier event featuring Cuban scholars who whose work at the Museo Ernest Hemingway may be the basis for their papers. Next, the Sun Valley Writers Conference goes from June 30 through July 3. Note that a bike festival on June 29 through July 2 overlaps these dates. Perhaps with a slight stretch of the imagination one might be able to tie it into the bike races in Hemingway’s fiction.
Of course, the main event for those interested in tauriana, the annual Fiesta San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain, is still on July 7–14. This seven days of running with the bulls, now famous around the world, popularized by Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, has prompted other celebrations during the month of July, including the Key West Festival from July 18 through 23. The Key West Papa Look Alike competition will be held July 20-22 as a fundraising event for a local community college. On Friday, July 21, the Perry Hotel in Petoskey, Michigan will host an event celebrating Hemingway’s birthday. Included in the celebrtion will be the premier showing of the new documentary “Young Hemingway: Finding His Muse in Northern Michigan.” On that same weekend Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida, will hold its first Hemingway conference. Raul Villareal, son of Hemingway’s Cuban major domo, Rene Villareal and his colleague Michael Curry are the organizers and promise a great program, including a talk by Valerie Hemingway. September brings another Hemingway Festival, this one in Ketchum, Idaho. Now also an annual event, this year’s gathering will be held the weekend after Labor Day (September 7-9). The year rounds out with the annual Michigan Hemingway Society weekend in Petoskey October 6 through 9. Watch for news of other Michigan oriented events in 2017 and mark your 2018 calendar for July 22-29, the International Hemingway Society conference in Paris!