For Immediate Release: March 19, 2004
Further information: Ann Scanlon (617) 514-1662
BOSTON -- On Sunday, April 4, PEN/New England and the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum will honor Jennifer Haigh as the 2004 recipient of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a distinguished first book of fiction for Mrs. Kimble.
Sean Hemingway, the grandson of Nobel Prize-winning writer Ernest Hemingway, will present the award at the April 4th ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. Ernest Hemingway’s papers are archived at the Kennedy Library and Museum. The late Mary Hemingway, the wife of Ernest Hemingway, founded the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award in 1976 to honor her late husband and draw attention to first books of fiction.
The ceremony will also honor writers Carlo Rotella and Joan Leegant as co-winners of the 2004 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, given annually to an author from New England or to an author whose writing includes a New England setting. Mr. Rotella is being recognized for Cut Time: An Education at the Fights, and Ms. Leegant for An Hour in Paradise. The L.L. Winship/PEN Award honors long-time Boston Globe editor Laurence L. Winship and is sponsored by the Boston Globe and PEN/New England.
Award-winning novelist Russell Banks, whose works Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, will serve as the ceremony’s keynote speaker. The ceremony will take place on Sunday, April 4, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Those interested in attending should call the Kennedy Library at (617) 514-1643 to reserve a seat.
Jennifer Haigh – 2004 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award Recipient
A 2002 James A. Michener Fellow, Ms. Haigh earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her first book of fiction, Mrs. Kimble, looks at marriage and the three women who are compelled to marry Ken Kimble. The Hemingway Foundation/Society, headed by Linda Wagner-Martin, funds the award’s $7,500 prize. Judges for the award were Chris Bohjalian, Margot Livesey, and Dagoberto Gilb.
Finalists in the competition for the 2004 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award were Murad Kalim for Night Journey and Z.Z. Packer for Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Runners-up are Suki Kim for The Interpreters and Ellen Ullman for The Bug. Ms. Haigh and competition finalists and runners-up receive Ucross Residency Fellowships at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, a retreat for artists and writers.
Carlo Rotella and Joan Leegant – 2004 L.L. Winship/PEN Award Recipients
Carlo Rotella and Joan Leegant are co-winners of the 2004 L.L. Winship/PEN Award. Carlo Rotella’s Cut Time: An Education at the Fights examines the lives of those who enter the world of boxing and lessons learned. Joan Leegant’s An Hour in Paradise, a collection of ten stories, tells the stories of characters searching for spiritual and human connection. The judges for the prize were PEN members Diana der Hovanessian, Monica Wood, Katherine A. Powers, and Richard Hoffman.
Finalists for the 2004 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award include Caroline Alexander for The Bounty; Dick Allen for The Day Before; Jessica Shattuck for The Hazards of Good Breeding; and Rosanna Warren for Departure.
The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, PEN New England, the Friends of the Hemingway Collection, The Boston Globe, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/Society, and the Ucross Foundation sponsor the presentation of the awards. PEN New England provides a focal point for New England’s literary community, sponsors literary events, helps advance the cause of literature and reading, and defends free expression.
The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum is home to the largest collection of Ernest Hemingway’s papers. Jacqueline Kennedy described Mary Hemingway’s gift of Ernest Hemingway’s papers as helping "to fulfill our hopes that the Library will become a center for the study of American civilization, in all its aspects." Mrs. Kennedy brought the presentation of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award to the Kennedy Library from New York. The Hemingway Foundation/Society, PEN New England, The Boston Globe, and the Kennedy Library ensure that the judging and presentation of the award remain in New England.
In 2003, the Kennedy Library Foundation was awarded a $150,000 Save America’s Treasures grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior to preserve the Kennedy Library and Museum’s Ernest Hemingway Collection. Support from Save America’s Treasures will help address the conservation, cleaning, repair, and mitigation needs of the collection. Items in urgent need of conservation work include Hemingway’s first draft of The Sun Also Rises (with a working-title Fiesta); family scrapbooks; Hemingway’s leather briefcase with stamps revealing where and how he traveled; a ring made out of shrapnel from the writer’s World War I injuries; Hemingway’s five military medals; books with the writer’s handwritten notes in the margins from his private library; rare volumes, including Goya’s Los Proverbios – a volume found in only two or three other U.S. libraries; signed, first editions of Ezra Pound’s The Cantos and James Joyce’s Ulysses; manuscripts and correspondence; and more than 7,000 vintage photographic prints. The funding will also provide support for intensive treatment for a number of damaged items, re-housing of the entire collection, the creation of new research copies of Hemingway’s manuscripts and photographs, and microfilming of the collection.