The Hemingway District Oak Park (business district) hosts a “Tokens of Love” event in the business area highlighting many of the local businesses and retailers. More details to follow.

As part of our Hemingway in the 21st Century series, we will host a moderated discussion on one of the latest books added to the Hemingway anthology, Hemingway’s Passions: His Women, His Wars and His Writing with author and Hemingway scholar, Dr. Nancy Sindelar. Refreshments and light snacks will be served.

In 1950, Hemingway told Marlene Dietrich that he truly loved only five women. Who were these women and why did he love them? In Hemingway’s Passions, Dr. Sindelar answers these questions. Through quotations from his works and personal letters, as well as sixty photographs-many of which have not been previously published-she captures Hemingway’s life and romantic adventures, revealing his own feelings about his romantic relationships and the ways his experiences with these women appear in his literary works.

The event is FREE, but we kindly ask you to please register via the blue box link below to assist us in making accommodations for all.

Nancy W. Sindelar, PhD , has spent over 30 years in education as a teacher, administrator, university professor and consultant. She has published numerous articles and three books on educational topics and two Hemingway biographies. She has made multiple presentations at the International Colloquium Ernest Hemingway in Havana, Cuba; the American Literature Association Conferences in Washington, DC, Boston, and San Francisco; the Hemingway Society Conferences in Venice and Paris as well as Oak Park, Illinois, and Sheridan, Wyoming; and keynoted the Hemingway Festivals in Sun Valley, Idaho. You can learn more about here at http://nancysindelar.com/

Haunted Hemingway: Ghost Stories

7:00 -9:00 pm

F@H's features the Hemingway Birthplace as a backdrop for an evening of literary ghost stories read by Chicago area writers. Featured authors will be:

Juan Martinez is the author of the novel Extended Stay (Camino del Sol/University of Arizona Press, 2023) and the story collection Best Worst American (Small Beer Press, 2017). He lives near Chicago and is an associate professor at Northwestern University. His work has appeared most recently in McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, The Believer, The Chicago Quarterly Review, The Sunday Morning Transport, Huizache, Ecotone, NIGHTMARE, McSweeney’s, NPR's Selected Shorts, Small Odysseys, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Sudden Fiction Latino, Flash Fiction America, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in the Latinx horror anthology Ghosts Where We Are From.

Cynthia Pelayo is a Bram Stoker Award–winning author. Her novels include Vanishing Daughters, Forgotten Sisters, Children of Chicago and The Shoemaker’s Magician. She is also the editor of Ghosts of Where We Are From, a Latinx Horror anthology featuring today's bestselling Latin American authors. In addition to writing genre-blending novels that incorporate elements of fairy tales, mystery, detective, crime, and horror, Pelayo has written numerous short stories and the poetry collection Crime Scene. The recipient of the 2021 International Latino Book Award, she holds a master of fine arts in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives in Chicago with her family. For more information, visit www.cinapelayo.com.

Puloma Ghosh (she/her) is the author of the short story collection, Mouth (Astra House, 2024). Her work has appeared in One Story, Cake Zine, No Tokens, BOTM's VOLUME Ø, CRAFT, Cutleaf, and other publications. She has received fellowships from Tin House and Bennington College. She lives in Chicago.

JP Solheim is a fiction writer, teacher, and literary critic. Their fiction has been published in Bellevue Literary Review, MQR: Mixtape, Midwest Weird Audio Literary Magazine, The Pinch, and other journals. They were also bassist, singer, and songwriter in several Chicago indie punk bands, and currently serve as the Associate Director of the BookEnds novel revision fellowship at The Lichtenstein Center of Stony Brook University.

VanderCook College of Music Faculty Woodwind Trio will present a program of music written during Hemingway’s lifetime. Mariana Gariazzo (flute), Julie Popplewell (oboe), and Bonnie Campbell (clarinet) will share works highlighting diverse musical styles from the first half of the 20th century.

Dr. Mariana Gariazzo received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Music in flute performance from Yale University. She has been a recipient of several awards and distinctions in solo and chamber music categories including Fundacion Antorchas, Juventudes Musicales, UNC Orchestra competition, and the Robert Wilson Award for Outstanding Woodwind Performance at Yale. She has been awarded multiple grants including the Innovative Pedagogy Grant, the Arts Enhancement Grant, the Academic Innovation Grant, the High Impact Innovation Practices, and the Advance Climate Together Grant at Texas A&M University.

Julie Popplewell received her Bachelors of Music in Oboe Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While at UIUC, she won the Smith Music Competition, earning a full tuition scholarship. Julie has studied with renowned oboists —Dr. Nancy Ambrose King, Daniel Stolper, and Scott Hostetler. Additionally, she has studied with Grover Schiltz, Deb Stevenson, Jelena Dirks, Lora Schaefer, Gordon Hunt, and Richard Killmer. After post-graduate work done at DePaul University, Julie quickly became an active freelance oboist and teacher in the Chicago area, maintaining an oboe studio consisting of 30+ students in the western suburbs.

Bonnie Campbell received a doctor of music degree in music literature and clarinet performance from Indiana University. She also holds degrees from Yale University and Roberts Wesleyan College (summa cum laude) and has attended the Banff School of the Arts. Her teachers include James Campbell, Keith Wilson, Margaret Quackenbush, and Alan Hacker. Dr. Campbell has performed guest recitals at colleges and universities across the country. Her orchestral experience includes performances at the Evian Festival (France) as well as at the opening ceremonies of the Bastille Opera House in Paris. She has been a member of the South Bend Symphony and the Camerata Chamber Orchestra of Bloomington, an ensemble jointly comprised of faculty and students from the Indiana University School of Music.

In Ernie’s Footsteps: A Walking Tour of Young Hemingway’s Oak Park

A 90-minute outdoor tour explores young Hemingway’s connections to Oak Park. Sites to be visited include the Birthplace Museum, Boyhood home, Oak Park & River Forest High School, Oak Park Public Library, Congregational Church and WW I War Memorial in Scoville Park. Your guide is Dr. Nancy Sindelar, author of Influencing Hemingway: The People and Places That Shaped His Life and Work. Includes guided walking tour and 1 copy of book, Influencing Hemingway (15 person max)

Advanced Reservations required

In Ernie’s Footsteps: A Walking Tour of Young Hemingway’s Oak Park

A 90-minute outdoor tour explores young Hemingway’s connections to Oak Park. Sites to be visited include the Birthplace Museum, Boyhood home, Oak Park & River Forest High School, Oak Park Public Library, Congregational Church and WW I War Memorial in Scoville Park. Your guide is Dr. Nancy Sindelar, author of Influencing Hemingway: The People and Places That Shaped His Life and Work. Includes guided walking tour and 1 copy of book, Influencing Hemingway (15 person max)

Advanced Reservations required

In Ernie’s Footsteps: A Walking Tour of Young Hemingway’s Oak Park

A 90-minute outdoor tour explores young Hemingway’s connections to Oak Park. Sites to be visited include the Birthplace Museum, Boyhood home, Oak Park & River Forest High School, Oak Park Public Library, Congregational Church and WW I War Memorial in Scoville Park. Your guide is Dr. Nancy Sindelar, author of Influencing Hemingway: The People and Places That Shaped His Life and Work. Includes guided walking tour and 1 copy of book, Influencing Hemingway (15 person max)

Advanced Reservations required

In Ernie’s Footsteps: A Walking Tour of Young Hemingway’s Oak Park

A 90-minute outdoor tour explores young Hemingway’s connections to Oak Park. Sites to be visited include the Birthplace Museum, Boyhood home, Oak Park & River Forest High School, Oak Park Public Library, Congregational Church and WW I War Memorial in Scoville Park. As part of your tour you will receive a copy of Dr. Nancy Sindelar’s book Influencing Hemingway: The People and Places That Shaped His Life and Work. Includes guided walking tour and 1 copy of book, Influencing Hemingway (15 person max)

Advanced Reservations required

In Ernie’s Footsteps: A Walking Tour of Young Hemingway’s Oak Park

A 90-minute outdoor tour explores young Hemingway’s connections to Oak Park. Sites to be visited include the Birthplace Museum, Boyhood home, Oak Park & River Forest High School, Oak Park Public Library, Congregational Church and WW I War Memorial in Scoville Park. Your guide is Dr. Nancy Sindelar, author of Influencing Hemingway: The People and Places That Shaped His Life and Work. Includes guided walking tour and 1 copy of book, Influencing Hemingway (15 person max)

Advanced Reservations required

7:00 - 9:00 PM

Tonight, as part of our F@H series we present a porch concert featuring Nora O’Connor and Steve Dawson. We will also acknowledge our student scholarship recipients while celebrating what would be Hemingway’s 125th birthday.

General lawn seating will be available and feel free to bring your own lawn chair. Refreshments will also be available.

Nora O’Connor has been an in-demand backup singer/multi-instrumentalist for decades, performing around the world with Iron and Wine, The Decemberists, Andrew Bird, Robbie Fulks, Neko Case, Mavis Staples, and Chicago super group the Flat Five, to name a few. The constraints wrought by Covid limited her to touring the backyards of her hometown alone, and reminded her that she can hold her own on guitar and she can sing the hell out of anything—and she can write a song, too. With time to spare at home, she began recording a series of new home demos that became her third album, My Heart released in October 2022 on Pravda Records. You can learn more about her at : https://www.noraoconnormusic.com/

Chicago Folk / Americana singer / songwriter, Steve Dawson, has been called “one of the most underrated songwriters in American music,” who writes, “graceful, poetic songs akin to a volume of great short stories in their precise, exacting wordplay and soulful heartache.” Dawson has released six albums with his long-time band, Dolly Varden, and six solo albums, including 2021’s “At The Bottom Of A Canyon In The Branches Of A Tree,” and the 2024’s, “Ghosts,” both on Pravda Records. https://stevedawsonmusic.com/

The Hemingway Foundation in collaboration with the Hemingway Business District and the Collaboration for Early Childhood (CEC) will hold a kids running the bulls event, children (3+) decorate their own bull and parade them around Scoville Park.

Please meet at the War Memorial in Scoville Park at 10:00am.

A business district scavenger hunt (at your own pace) sponsored by Visit Oak Park will also take place on Saturday and Sunday.

Tonight, we take a casual tour of the Hemingway Business District and explore some of the works of Ernest Hemingway. Refreshments will be available at each location.

6pm Reading 1: Selleria Veneta 139 N Oak Park Ave. First six pages of “A Movable Feast,” which takes place in a cafe Hemingway never pinpoints.

7pm Reading 2: R Titus Designs 143 S Oak Park Ave. The beginning of Book Five of “A Farewell to Arms,” chapter 38, which describes areas in Switzerland.

8pm Reading 3: Yoga Loft Studios 115 N Oak Park Ave. The first three inter-textual italicized bits from The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

Hemingway Foundation Reader: Karolis Gintaras Zukauskas, Writer, Professor of Language Arts, Morton College

In Ernie’s Footsteps: A Walking Tour of Young Hemingway’s Oak Park

A 90-minute outdoor tour explores young Hemingway’s connections to Oak Park. Sites to be visited include the Birthplace Museum, Boyhood home, Oak Park & River Forest High School, Oak Park Public Library, Congregational Church and WW I War Memorial in Scoville Park. Your guide is Dr. Nancy Sindelar, author of Influencing Hemingway: The People and Places That Shaped His Life and Work. Includes guided walking tour and 1 copy of book, Influencing Hemingway (15 person max)

Advanced Reservations required

In Ernie’s Footsteps: A Walking Tour of Young Hemingway’s Oak Park

A 90-minute outdoor tour explores young Hemingway’s connections to Oak Park. Sites to be visited include the Birthplace Museum, Boyhood home, Oak Park & River Forest High School, Oak Park Public Library, Congregational Church and WW I War Memorial in Scoville Park. Your guide is Dr. Nancy Sindelar, author of Influencing Hemingway: The People and Places That Shaped His Life and Work. Includes guided walking tour and 1 copy of book, Influencing Hemingway (15 person max)

Advanced Reservations required

House Concert, Sunday, May 19, 2024 (7:00-9:00 pm)

Guitarist Stephane Wrembel, returns for an intimate house concert as part of our F@H series at the Hemingway Birthplace Museum. Mr. Wrembel is one of the most highly regarded guitarists in the world specializing in the style of legendary composer/guitarist Django Reinhardt. Born in Fountainebleau, France, he learned his craft traveling the French countryside before graduating from Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has had a remarkable career, toured the world, while releasing 17 albums under his name and the nom de plume, The Django Experiment.  In May of 2023, he released Django New Orleans recorded with his NYC-based specialty group under the same name receiving rave reviews for the album and live performances.

Stephane is best known for writing the theme song "Bistro Fada" for the Grammy-winning soundtrack to Woody Allen’s 2011 Oscar-winning film Midnight in Paris, and acclaimed for his innovative musical interpretations of Gypsy legend Django Reinhardt.

So make plans to join us in the intimate surroundings of the Ernest Hemingway Birthplace, to take in the wonderful talents of Stephane Wrembel.

There will be an album CD sale and signing following the performance.

Seating is limited (four ticket max purchase) and advanced ticket purchase is strongly recommended. A cash bar service will also be available.

How can we express our concern, grief, and awe for this fragile planet that we call our home? Poetry can train us to listen deeply to the voices of the earth. Oak Park poet Hila Ratzabi will read from her award-winning debut book of poetry,There Are Still Woods, which is described as “a radiant appraisal of life at the precipice of climate crisis and a haunting elegy for all we stand to lose.” Following the reading, we will hear from Pamela Tate, a member of OPCAN (Oak Park Climate Action Network), on local efforts to combat the climate crisis and how we can all get involved. There will be time for a Q&A with the audience, and books will be available for sale and signing by the author. 

Hila Ratzabi is the author of There Are Still Woods (June Road Press, 2022), which won a gold Nautilus Book Award and was a finalist for a National Indie Excellence Award. Her poetry has been published widely in literary journals and in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Ratzabi is director of communications at North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Illinois, and lives in Oak Park.

(REMOTE ZOOM PROGRAM)

Thursday, April 4, 2024 (7:00 PM - 8:30 PM) 

With a new baseball season upon us, it is only fitting that we have Dr. Sharon Hamilton return for an updated discussion on Hemingway and Chicago Baseball. When Ernest Hemingway was growing up in Oak Park during the early years of the twentieth century, it was a particularly exciting time to be a Chicago baseball fan. During the years of Hemingway's youth the Chicago Cubs, White Sox, and Federal League Whales were all championship teams. This talk explores such questions as: Which Chicago baseball teams did Hemingway watch and cheer for? What was his personal experience of the Black Sox scandal? What can be determined about Chicago baseball photos Hemingway himself took? What Chicago baseball players did Hemingway particularly admire? And was he the first author to use the baseball idiom “off base,” meaning a mistake, in a novel? Join us for wonderful discussion on America’s pastime and Hemingway.

**the field image has a caption which says: “In the yard at Windemere Cottage -Walloon Lake, Mich.- our own baseball team, 1912. L-R: Cheslie Sweeney, Ernest Hemingway, Mildred Sweeney, Marcelline Hemingway, Grace Stockwell. (Cheslie and Ernest slept in the tent)” * part of the Hemingway Archives

**Ticket Stub, Hemingway went to the Yankees vs White Sox baseball game at the Polo Grounds on May 22, 2018, the day before he shipped out to Europe for WWI. He saved and carried this ticket stub with him. * part of the Hemingway Archives

5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

As part of our Hemingway in the 21st Century series, we discuss one of the latest books added to the Hemingway anthology, Mythbusting Hemingway: Debunking Hemingway Myths and Celebrating the Extraordinary Stories of His Life. Co-authored by Thomas Bevilacqua and Robert K. Elder, we will be joined by Oak Park's own Elder to discuss the many myths of Hemingway. This discussion will be led by Carla Whitacre Mayer, who heads up the Outreach and Education initiatives for the foundation.

In this book, Hemingway legends--both true and debunked--are informed by detective work the authors did for the Paris Review, Chicago Tribune, and Huffington Post. For this volume, the authors conducted fresh interviews and scholarship that shed new light on the man, his work, and legacy.

The event is FREE, but please register here.

We will be recording this event and uploading to Youtube, we will provide a link when it is available.

Robert K. Elder is the award-winning author or editor of 20+ books, including four about Ernest Hemingway. He is also the President and CEO of Outrider Foundation, which supports journalism and media about climate change and nuclear threats. A Montana native, Elder lives in Chicagoland with his family. For more information, visit robertkelder.com.

Ken Trainor sits down with best-selling author, William Hazelgrove to discuss Ken’s new book, “Our Town Oak Park – Walk with Me, in Search of True Community,” based on columns published in Wednesday Journal over the past three decades, which chronicle life in our dynamic, ever-evolving community where the unique meets the universal. The unifying thread is true community, finding it in the extraordinary ordinary, in the day-to-day, the face-to-face, the moments of beauty or, as Thornton Wilder said of his play, “Our Town,” finding “a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life.” So join us as we embrace community.

** Please note date change

Books will be available for purchase at the event.

Registration is requested as event capacity is limited.

Ken Trainor has been with Growing Community Media for 30 years, wearing almost every hat available, including Forest Park Review editor, Austin Weekly News editor, Wednesday Journal managing editor and, currently, copy editor, Viewpoints editor, and obituaries editor. He has written upward of 2,000 columns and still hasn’t run out of things to say.

William Hazelgrove is the National Bestselling author of ten novels and twelve nonfiction titles. His books have received starred reviews in Publisher Weekly Kirkus, Booklist, Book of the Month Selections, ALA Editors Choice Awards Junior Library Guild Selections, Literary Guild Selections, History Book Club Selections, History Book Club Bestsellers, Distinguished Book Award. and optioned for the movies. He was the first Ernest Hemingway Writer in Residence where he wrote in the attic of Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace. https://www.williamhazelgrove.com/

Haunted Hemingway: Ghost Stories SOLD OUT

7:00 -9:00 pm

F@H's features a haunted Hemingway Birthplace so join us for an evening of literary ghost stories read by Chicago area writers. Featured authors included:

Deborah Shapiro is the author of the novels Consolation, The Summer Demands, and The Sun in Your Eyes (a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice). Her work has also appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Sight Unseen, Chicago Magazine, Literary Hub, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Chicago. http://www.deborah-shapiro.com/

Jennifer Solheim’s short fiction has earned recognition in contests held by Glimmer Train and Craft, and her fiction and essays have been published in Bellevue Literary Review, Confrontation, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Pinch,and Poets & Writers. One of her stories in BLR was performed at their Page to Stage series at the NYU Langone School. She was longlisted for the Granum Fellowship Prize. She serves as Associate Director of the BookEnds novel revision fellowship at Stony Brook University, co-directed by Susan Merrell and Meg Wolitzer. https://jennifersolheim.com/

Julia Fine is the author of The Upstairs House, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction; What Should Be Wild, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Superior First Novel Award. Her third novel Maddalena and the Dark was published by Flatiron in June 2023. She teaches writing in Chicago, where she lives with her husband and children. https://www.julia-fine.com/

Ananda Lima is a poet, fiction writer, and translator, the author of Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the Hudson Prize. Her fiction debut, Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil, is forthcoming from Tor Books. She is also the author of four chapbooks: Vigil, Tropicália, winner of the Newfound Prose Prize, Amblyopia, and Translation. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, The Common, Witness, and elsewhere. She was awarded the inaugural WIP Fellowship by Latinx-in-Publishing, sponsored by Macmillan Publishers, for her fiction, and an early version of CRAFT was named a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA from Rutgers University, Newark. Originally from Brasilia, Brazil, she lives in Chicago. https://www.anandalima.com/

Please join us for our fall fundraiser event on Saturday, September 30th, from 6:00 – 9:00 pm highlighting our Hemingway Archives held in the Special Collections of the Oak Park Public Library. The crown jewel within this archive collection is the famed “Dear John” letter Ernest Hemingway received from his nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky, upon his return to Oak Park after serving in the American Red Cross during World War I.  The evening’s festivities will focus on the seminal part this letter played both in Hemingway’s life and in literary history.

6:00 – 6:45 pm     Cocktail Reception with hors d'oeuvres

6:45 – 8:00 pm     Dear John Letter and Archival Presentation

8:00 – 9:00 pm     Archival Viewing and Cocktails
 
The evening will feature delicious catered hors d’oeuvres, cocktails by Papa’s Pilar, wine, beer, a separate raffle for professionally framed themed artwork of the Hemingway Birthplace ($400 value) or a Papa Pilar Themed Cooler Gift Basket ($550 value). Raffle tickets can be purchased in advance or on-site. We will also have on-site a fabulous Hemingway bookshelf (purchase a book for $20 and get a reward, $35-$100 value).

Tickets are $60.00 per person (includes hors d’oeuvres, two complimentary beverages of your choice).

Raffle Tickets are $20.00 each

DRESS ATTIRE: Smart Casual (No shorts, no jeans, etc)

Reserve your spot for what will be an enjoyable, insightful evening at: