Indiana State University Newsroom

Authors who penned the biographical time capsule "Hidden Hemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park" will share their expertise in Terre Haute.

Robert Elder, Mark Cirino and Aaron Vetch will lead a discussion about their book 1:30-3 p.m. Feb. 19 at Westminster Village. The event is free and will include a book signing.

"Hidden Hemingway" has received much praise for its insight into what shaped Hemingway's beginnings. The book offers an illumination into the acclaimed author's earliest years and celebrates his life, accomplishments and impacts on American literature.

Hemingway, a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and World War I veteran is often regarded to as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He is known for novels such as "A Farewell To Arms."

Born in Oak Park, Ill., Hemingway spent the first six years of his life in an old-style Victorian style house in this sleepy and quaint suburb located 30 minutes from Chicago. Oak Park is the primary focus for the biographical book, as it explores the experiences that shaped Hemingway's writing style and future stories.

To gather the information, the authors went to a special foundation, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving remnants from Hemingway's early life. Most of the visual materials in the book are from the foundation.

"Hidden Hemingway" is an expansive look into the collection of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. The foundation has turned the house Hemingway spent his childhood years into a museum and offers tours focused on the background of Hemingway and his family during his early years, as well as Hemingway's contributions to the community.

The works of Hemingway by the foundation are stored in the New Oak Park library. The archives also own three other collections, including Hemingway's high school years, wedding invitations, original works and recordings. The documents, photos and other items on display within "Hidden Hemingway" are one-of-a-kind biographical tools that separate other works about the literary genius and his ambitions, adversities, goals, tragedies and triumphs and happiest adolescent moments.

The book presents a visual looking glass into the author's early life with more than 300 images, photos which have previously gone unpublished, letters between Hemingway and his World War I sweetheart, Agnes, memorabilia, high school assignments, diaries and a dental X-ray.

While photographs are in part a biography themselves, the book also includes Hemingway's earliest published work and one of his final letters.

Elder, Cirino and Vetch all have experience research and writing about Hemingway and share a love for the classics the author published throughout his lifetime. Elder is a journalist and editor-in-chief of Oak Leaves, the paper Hemingway delivered as a child. Cirino has contributed a number of Hemingway-themed works to publication, and his scholarly work has been published in The Hemingway Review. Vetch extensive knowledge about Hemingway's bullfighting, boats and Michigan getaways.

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Writer: Kayla Carmicheal, media relations assistant, Office of Communications and Marketing, Indiana State University, 812-237-3773 or kcarmicheal@sycamores.indstate.edu