The University of Idaho Hemingway Festival held an annual benefit dinner Saturday to raise funds for the English department’s Hemingway Fellowship, drawing together readers and writers in celebration of Ernest Hemingway’s legacy.
“Hemingway made literature accessible in a way — his sentence structure and syntax were all within range of an ordinary meter. It was writing that could be read by anyone, yet it was somehow still profound and beautiful,” said Ron McFarland, a Hemingway scholar.
“Hemingway had his hand on the pulse of his age, he was the writer of an entire generation, which is why we celebrate and honor him in a variety of ways like the festival and the UI fellowship.”
Festival Coordinator Melanie Thongs said the Hemingway Fellowship is awarded to a graduate student in UI’s MFA program, specializing in fiction, and gives the student the necessary funding to devote their time to entirely to writing a novel.
Thongs said the English department hopes to raise enough money to create additional fellowships for poetry and nonfiction graduate students and that the benefit contributes directly to funding the initiative.
The dinner featured readings from McFarland, winners of the 2017 Hemingway Festival High School Writing Contest, the 2016-2017 UI Hemingway Fellow Jerri Newbill Benson and the 2016 PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author Ottessa Moshfegh.
McFarland read short excerpts from Hemingway’s high school writings in honor of the 100th anniversary of Hemingway’s graduation from high school.
McFarland said Hemingway’s early writings did not necessarily convey that later success the author would have, but they did somewhat reveal the author’s unique style.
“Overall, I think his high school work communicated a genuine commitment to writing fiction,” McFarland said.
After his reading, McFarland announced the three winners of the 2017 Hemingway Festival High School Writing Contest. These students submitted either a poem or a piece of fiction, which they read from at the dinner.
McFarland said the writing contest allows regional high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to win cash prizes and pursue their passions in literature.
Alison Farrell and Anna Garro won for their respective poems, “The Way” and “Dearly Beloved.” While Kelsey Roach won for her fictional story, “A Different Man.”
McFarland said the winning students could’ve given young Hemingway a run for his money, and he looks forward seeing their writings evolve over time.
Following a brief intermission, UI English professor Kim Barnes introduced the 2016-2017 UI Hemingway Fellow Jerri Newbill Benson.
Benson read from the collection of short fiction that she is working on as a part of her fellowship.
Benson then introduced the 2016 PEN/Hemingway Award winning author Ottessa Moshfegh, who read from her novel, “Eileen.”
“The festival aims to bring learning and literature into our community and attempts to build up the community through that learning and literature,” McFarland said. “I think we definitely accomplished that tonight and with the other events of the past week.”
Olivia Heersink can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @heersinkolivia