Ernest Hemingway and Key West Writers
Author: Ernest Hemingway
In the mid-19th century in Key West, the cigar industry transformed the island into the thirteenth largest port in the country. To get an education and to relax while they worked, the cigarmakers hired lectores, or readers, to keep them up on the news and the classics. These lectores read in both English and Spanish.
Posted on Sat, Jul 10, 1999 by Deborah Straw

An Unconventional Journey to the Library of Congress
For the last dozen years I have edited a literary travel series. My books collect the impressions, in both fiction and non-fiction, of authors touring through Europe: Hemingway in Paris, Edith Wharton in Italy, Frances Mayes in her beloved Tuscany. For a bibliophile this is provocative work, but the first thing I am asked is: "So, you have to travel to those places to do your research?" And "tough gig" is the customary response.
Posted on Wed, May 09, 2007 by Alice Leccese Powers

Rousing Nietzsche in Orta, Italy
Of all the Northern Italian lakes, Lake Orta and the town of Orta is a true prize. Divided by the Mattarone Mountain, Orta is cut off from the popular tourism of Lake Maggiore, and its shore town of Stresa--famously featured in Ernest Hemingway's war novel, A Farewell to Arms. Yet Lake Orta and the town are not short of literary connections. Its wooded alpine mountains, Monte Sacre, the holy mount (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and Monte Rosa, have a history of inspiring those who arrive at this Piedmont idle, which is often overlooked. Yet the least unspoiled.
Posted on Wed, Feb 20, 2008 by D. Curoopen Colpman

Zelda Fitzgerald: The Roaring '20s Icon
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was one of the most celebrated figures of the 1920s. Along with her husband, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda epitomized the spirit of the times: carefree, fun-loving, and living for the moment. In the early 1920s, Scott and Zelda had the world at their feet. Fitzgerald was a rising star in the literary world with the publication of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, and was seen as the unofficial spokesman for an entire generation. Zelda, meanwhile, is credited as being the first true "flapper" and symbol of the age in her own right.
Posted on Thu, Jan 07, 2010 by Sara Hodon

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time. So ends the book, Cross Creek, written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
Posted on Wed, Jan 05, 2000 by Kay Harwell Fernandez

Malabar Farm State Park: Louis Bromfield Comes Home Again
As a writer myself, I found it a refreshing experience to take some time to visit a place that was once the grand home and farmland of a writer from an era so long passed. Malabar Farm State Park is the place I speak of. It's located in Lucas, Ohio, roughly 70 miles northeast of Columbus.
Posted on Mon, Mar 20, 2006 by Roy Barnes

Jamaica Kincaid and Annie John: A Childhood Cut Short
One author in particular has dominated the West Indian literary scene for years: Jamaica Kincaid. She was born Elaine Potter Richardson on the tiny island of Antigua in 1949. Located in the Lesser Antilles island chain, Antigua is a small, tourist destination made up of light pink sand beaches. Its cultural traditions are derived from both African and British societies; for example, music and dance stem from their ancestral roots, while at school, children learn from the British English school system, even taking the life-altering A-levels (tests that determine if a student is admitted to the university of their choice).
Posted on Wed, Sep 20, 2006 by Jennifer Ciotta

Finding Mark Twain's Hannibal
Any modern pilgrim seeking the real Mark Twain will find his Mecca in a little town nestled in Bear Creek Valley on the Mississippi River some ninety miles north of St. Louis. It was Hannibal, Missouri and the river that defines it, where Twain consistently re-returned in his literature.
Posted on Wed, Jan 31, 2007 by Terrell Dempsey

Gertrude Stein: Hostess of the Parisian Literary Salon
In 1874 the ground was fertile for Gertrude Stein to become a woman of virile thoughts even in her youth. After having been born in a small industrial town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, little Gertrude Stein took to a life abroad at age one--crawling, then walking in Vienna, America, and elsewhere in Europe, under the care of her capricious, travel-happy father, her mother, and her four siblings.
Posted on Wed, Apr 04, 2007 by Lauren Owen

Alan Lightman Interview
A fascinating and compelling interview with Alan Lightman, the international bestselling author of Einstein's Dreams. Lightman speaks of the contrasts and similarities between the creative and scientific worlds, his influences and how he came to be a writer. He also gives us a glimpse of his creative process and tells about his upcoming book due out in the fall.
Posted on Fri, May 04, 2007  

Advertisement: