News from the Hemingway Collection

Abstract

- NEWS FROM THE HEMINGWAY COLLECTION JAMESM. ROTH The John F. Kennedy Library Hemingway Foundation/PENAward On Sunday, 13 April 2003, the Kennedy Library hosted the annual Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, America's best-known prize for a distinguished first book of fiction, and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Held in the Smith Center, the ceremony began at 3 pm. Patrick Hemingway, son of the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning writer Ernest Hemingway, presented the award to Gabriel Brownstein for his book, The Curious Case ofBenjamin Button, Apt. 3W (W. W. Norton & Company), and former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky delivered the keynote speech. The judges for the award were Percival Everett, Maureen Howard, and Jim Shepard. A reception followed the ceremony in the Pavilion, and the Hemingway Research Room was open for tours. In winning the award, Gabriel Brownstein joins an esteemed list of winners, including Justin Cronin for his warm and powerful collection of stories, Mary and O'Neil, Akhil Sharma for his remarkable and bold novel, An Obedient Father, Jhumpa Lahiri for her short story collection, Interpreter ofMaladies, Marilynne Robinson for Housekeeping, Susan Power for The Grass Dancer, Louis Begley for Wartime Lies, and Chang-rae Lee for Native Speaker. The $7,500 annual award was founded in 1976 by late PEN member Mary Hemingway to honor the memory of her husband and to draw attention to first books of fiction. Since Mary Hemingway's death in 1986, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation has continued to fund the award from the endowment she created. Administered by PEN, the only worldwide organization of writers, editors, and publishers, the award ceremony was moved to the John F. Kennedy Library through the efforts of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1992. In 1995, the Ucross Foundation, a residence for the Hemingway review, vol. 22, no. 2, spring 2003. Copyright © 2003 The Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Publishedbythe University ofIdaho Press, Moscow, Idaho. 118 ¦ THE HEMINGWAY REVIEW artists and writers located in Clearmont, Wyoming, began offering expense-paid residences to the winner, runners-up, and alternates. The Hemingway Foundation, the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, the John F. Kennedy Foundation, PEN New England, the Friends of the Hemingway Collection, the Boston Globe, and the Ucross Foundation sponsor the ceremony and reception. John F. Kennedy Library Works Toward Préservation ofHemingway Papers in Cuba The Rockefeller Foundation has awarded $75,000 to the American Council of Learned Societies/Social Science Research Council Working Group on Cuba to fund an initial one-year phase of a two to three year initiative intended to promote preservation and conservation of an important collection of Ernest Hemingway's papers that remain in Cuba. The Working Group on Cuba will manage the grant and the project in close collaboration with its Standing Committee on Cuban Libraries and Archives and an advisory council composed of those who envisaged the project and negotiated its early stages. Central partner institutions include the Hemingway Museum outside of Havana, the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago, the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, the National Archives of Cuba and the José Martí National Library of Cuba, the National Council of Cuban Cultural Patrimony, and the Cuban Ministry of Culture. The Northeast Document Conservation Center will help to carry out the preservation training and oversee work at the Finca Vigía, Hemingway's former residence located on the outskirts of Havana. The materials currently housed in the Hemingway Museum at the Finca Vigía constitute a large and important collection until now inaccessible to American and other scholars. In a critical state ofdeterioration, the collection contains, among other materials, Hemingway manuscripts, correspondence, scrapbooks, ephemera and a substantial collection ofbooks, many with marginalia by Hemingway. At present, these materials have been removed,from public access in an attempt to slow their deterioration, underscoring the urgencyofthe initiative to restore, preserve, and conserve the materials. Only in so doingcanwe ensure access to thisvitalresourceforscholars inthe United States, Cuba, and aroundtheworld, aswell as forthe greaterpublic. Although the Kennedy Library is best known for its 36 million documents related to President Kennedy and mid-20tri century American his- NEWS EROM THE HEMINGWAY COLLECTION · 119 tory, in fact 15 to 20...