21 September 2011, 5:00-6:30pm Rainey Auditorium, Penn Museum, 3260 South Street

Hemingway's Boat

Paul Hendrickson
Author and Senior Lecturer, English, Penn

Fifty years after his death by suicide, Ernest Hemingway endures as a major figure in American letters and a fascinating, complex subject for biographers. In Hemingway's Boat, Paul Hendrickson has ingeniously adapted the conventions of literary biography to tell the story of Hemingway's life in a new way, through the story of his beloved fishing boat, Pilar. Hear the acclaimed author of Sons of Mississippi, winner of the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award, as he talks about one of the most eagerly anticipated books of the fall publishing season.


Formerly a prizewinning feature writer for the Washington Post, Paul Hendrickson joined the faculty of the Penn English department in 1997 and began teaching his now legendary workshops on nonfiction writing. He is the author of Seminary; Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award); The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (a finalist for the National Book Award); and Sons of Mississippi (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award).