The International Ernest Hemingway Colloquium celebrates its fifteenth edition in Havana, as usual, with the participation of academics from around the world who discuss topics related to Hemingway’s life, work, and legacy. Here is additional information (a Granma article, translated by Cubadebate) on the upcoming colloquium, which takes place June 18-21, 2015, at Hotel Palacio O’Farrill, Old Havana, Cuba.

Ada Rosa Alfonso, president of the organizing committee and director the Finca Vigía museum [. . .] noted that the site of the Colloquium will be the Palacio O’Farrill (a typical example of 19th century neo-classical Havana architecture, located on the streets Cuba and Chacón in the city’s colonial center, (reportedly the former residence of one of the most affluent families of the period), and highlighted some of the important presentations taking place.

For example, Alfonso herself and Mary Jo Adams, executive director of the Finca Vigía Foundation, from the U.S., have been working on the theme A joint effort to preserve Hemingway’s legacy in Cuba; and Professor Hideo Yanagisawa, from the University of Meijo, Japan, will discuss the Digital Archives Project on notes in the collection of Ernest Hemingway books at the Finca Vigia, Cuba.

Among other topics to be addressed in the Colloquium will be Jace Gatzemeyer from the Pennsylvania State University’s dissertation, In search of “the real thing”: A reassessment of “Hemingway’s style;” while Russell Reising, professor of American Literature and Culture from the University of Toledo, Ohio, will present The ethics of sporting life in the novel The sun also risesby Ernest Hemingway.

The Colloquium will also be the perfect moment to launch two new books; El último león by Professor Ricardo Koon and Hemingway: ese desconocido by Enrique Cirules.

Furthermore, commemorated during the event will be the 80th anniversary of the publication of Green hills of Africa – a text noteworthy for the richness of its descriptions – and the 90 years since the publication of his first book, a volume of short stories entitled In our time.

Both texts will be discussed by Jorge Santos (The sweet enchantment of the Green hills of Africa) and Krista Quesenberry, from Pennsylvania State University (In Our Time), respectively.

As part of the Colloquium program, participants will of course tour the Finca Vigía; other sites around Havana linked to author’s stay on the island, among them the Floridita bar and restaurant, which boasts a famous life-size bronze statue of Hemingway by sculptor José Villa Soberón [see photo above]; and the fishing village of Cojimar, where he docked his yacht El Pilar, and in whose main square stands a bust of the author by sculptor Fernando Boada, made of pieces of bronze collected by local fishermen.

Havana was a special place for Ernest Hemingway. He wrote one of his most famous novels – The old man and the sea – winner of the 1953 Pulitzer Prize and 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature – at the Finca Vigía located in the capital’s San Francisco de Paula neighborhood. He also wrote a large part of For whom the bell tolls in the Ambos Mundos hotel in the Havana’s historic center.

The 15th International Colloquium is another step toward discovering an “absolutely true” Ernest Hemingway.

[Photo above by Dedé Vargas: life-size bronze statue of Hemingway by sculptor José Villa Soberón at La Floridita Restaurant and Bar; see Vargas’ work at https://www.flickr.com/photos/dedevargas/6346310490 ]

For full article, see http://en.cubadebate.cu/news/2015/06/12/15th-international-ernest-hemingway-colloquium/