The 2018 Hemingway Festival will be the ninth annual celebration hosted by the University of Idaho English Department. The festival has grown over time and today represents a community-wide literary event that honors writers on both the local and national level.
“I think of this more as a festival brought about by a celebration of American letters,” Hemingway Festival Director Toby Wray said.
The Hemingway Festival is a valued tradition for both its literary focus and its outreach on local and national levels.
“Here in north Idaho, we only have so many of these events,” Wray said.
Setting the Hemingway Festival apart from other UI academic community events, the festival organizers actively work to spread the event into the surrounding Moscow community.
“We’re really interested in the ‘town and gown’ approach,” Wray said.
Wray said that while it’s easy for the UI academic community to exist in a bubble, he feels it’s important to “step down from the hill that campus is on, and into the wider community.” This year, the Hemingway Festival is honoring that goal by hosting all eight festival events entirely off the UI campus.
Wray said the first event kicks off at the Moscow Public Library Thursday.
The library will host a panel discussion titled “Scholars on Hemingway and Place,” which will feature three UI faculty members and Joseph Mbele, an English professor at St. Olaf College.
Also on Thursday, the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre will show a recent film starring Mbele titled “Papa’s Shadow.” The film was directed by Hemingway’s son, Patrick, and explores the significance of the time the author spent traveling in east Africa.
The movie showing was coordinated primarily by Master of Fine Arts candidate and UI Hemingway Fellow Grant Maierhofer. The Hemingway Festival recognizes literary scholars at the high school and graduate levels, including the prestigious Creative Writing Hemingway Fellowship given to a graduate student in their third year.
“It’s basically an opportunity to get a bit more work done than would usually be the case in your final year,” Maierhofer said. As part of his responsibilities as the UI Hemingway Fellow, Maierhofer has been a part of the Hemingway Festival planning committee.
“It has been really good,” Maierhofer said. For Maierhofer, working to plan festivals and literary events is something he hopes to continue doing throughout his life, and the Hemingway Festival has been “a good primer.”
“I’m finishing a master’s degree and my sense is that any academic job I can hope for after this is going to involve this kind of work,” Maierhofer said.
The festival will continue with readings and social events daily until March 3. Writers of all ages and academic standing will have the chance to share their work, from the Hemingway Festival High School Writing Contest winners, to graduate students, to UI English department staff.
Maierhofer said that the readings can be a great opportunity for graduate students, “especially students who haven’t had a chance to do public readings.”
In addition to readings from community members, the festival will also feature a reception and reading with 2017 PEN/Hemingway Award recipient Yaa Gyasi. The PEN/Hemingway Award honors an American author’s outstanding fictional debut novel or short story collection. Each PEN/Hemingway Award winner has attended since the festival’s beginning and Gyasi will be reading from her celebrated novel, “Homegoing,” on Friday.
“This year I feel like things are uniquely far-reaching,” Maierhofer said. “(We’re) casting a wider net. It’s exciting to think about if someone went to every event, the kind of perspective they would come away with.”
Beth Hoots can be reached at [email protected]
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Event Schedule:
Thursday, March 1
Scholars on Hemingway and Place (11 a.m., Moscow Public Library)
Film Screening “Papa’s Shadow: Hemingway in East Africa” (1 p.m., Kenworthy)
Sneak Peeks Reading (7 p.m., Bookpeople Of Moscow)
Friday, March 2
Hemingway’s Cuban Legacy (1 p.m., Moscow Public Library)
High School Contest Winners Presentation and Reception for Yaa Gyasi (5:30 p.m., McConnell
Mansion)
Pen/Hemingway Winner, Yaa Gyasi Public Reading (7 p.m., Moscow High School Auditorium)
Saturday, March 3
Hemingway Fellowship Fundraiser Dinner/A Staged Reading of “Hills Like White
Elephants” (6 p.m., Bloom)
A Moveable Feets: Graduate Student Reading and Dance Party (7:30 p.m., One World Cafe)
All events are free with the exception of the Hemingway Fellowship Fundraiser Dinner. Tickets for this event can be purchased by calling 1 (208) 885-6156.