STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
“Islands in the Stream,” Ernest Hemingway’s posthumously published novel about an American painter on the island of Bimini, will provide the context for this year’s Hemingway.
This year’s seminar will be held Thursday through Saturday, Sept. 8-10 at The Community Library.
Featured speakers include Paul Hendrickson, who wrote “Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost.” The book focuses on Hemingway’s life from 1934 to 1961 and draws on previously unpublished material to show Hemingway could be capable of remarkable generosity.
Other speakers include Mark P. Ott, who wrote “A Sea of Change: Ernest Hemingway and the Gulf Stream, a Contextual Biography,” and Karen Osborn, research zoologist with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History STREAMCODE project.
There also will be presentations by Boise State University professor Clyde Monyhun, who will talk about memories of a life in “Islands in the Stream,” and BSU’s Stacey Guill, who will discuss the dock fight in the book.
Martha Williams will discuss the posthumous editing of “Islands in the Stream” and Joel Vilinsky will do a reading “On Being Shot Again: A Gulf Stream Letter.” There also will be a screening of the 1977 Paramount Pictures film adaptation of “Islands in the Stream.”
The seminar kicks off with an opening reception at 5 pm. Thursday, followed by Ott’s presentation on “A Sea of Change” at 6 p.m.
It will conclude with Hendrickson’s presentation on Saturday, followed by a closing reception catered by Adelfa’s Comida Cubana from Boise.
The seminar cots $80 for in-person attendees, who can register at https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/9195505.
It’s $25 for virtual attendees, who may register at https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/9195074.
Mary Hemingway found the unpublished novel among 332 works her husband left behind at his death. It features an American painter at different stages of his life. The first finds him dealing with the death of his two youngest children; the second with the news that his oldest son has died in war.
The final act follows the painter as he tracks and pursues the survivors of a sunken German U-boat on the northern coast of Cuba after he learns they massacred a village.