2018 Board Elections Are Now Closed
Results will be announced soon.
Please review each candidate's statement before clicking on VOTE NOW at the end of the statements. You may return and vote later if desired.
CANDIDATES FOR THE TWO BOARD POSITIONS: (in alphabetical order)
Carl Eby
(Professor of English, Appalachian State University)
It would be a pleasure and an honor to serve again on the Board of the Hemingway Foundation and Society. First, I want to thank Larry Grimes for serving as Foundation Treasurer for the past three years. Since Larry is not standing for reelection (I believe his hands will be full directing our next conference!), the Board will need a new Treasurer. If I am elected, and if the Board would like me to serve in this capacity, I have some experience doing this work, having served on the Board as Foundation Treasurer for three terms between 2007 and 2016. In addition to my past service on the Board, I have long served on the JFK Hemingway Grant Liaison Committee, the Founders’ Grant Committee, and as a reader for The Hemingway Review.
A member of the Hemingway Society for over twenty-six years (where did the time go?!), I am currently a professor of English at Appalachian State University, where I recently completed a five-year term as department chair. My publications include two books on Hemingway and many articles, including many in The Hemingway Review. I directed the Hemingway Society’s 2006 conference in Málaga and Ronda, Spain, and I am currently finishing a book about The Garden of Eden for the Reading Hemingway Series out of Kent State UP. The Hemingway Society feels like an extended family, and I would welcome the opportunity to volunteer and serve again.
Matthew Nickel
(Misericordia University)
I am sincerely honored to be nominated for the Hemingway Society Board. My experience co-directing the Hemingway in Paris Conference intensified my love of Hemingway scholarship and the people who engage in it so passionately. To be there in the iconic city of Paris with my wife Jes and my son Charlie, surrounded by over 500 good and talented people who share a similar love made the years of labor on conference preparations and event planning well worth the time and effort. I would be thrilled to continue building relations among the Hemingway society members who attended and the scholars and aficionados who have yet to discover the unique camaraderie of our Society.
As a member of the younger generation of Hemingway scholars, I would be delighted to learn from the current board members who have expressed a desire to mentor a new generation of board members. If elected, bridging the gap between generations and securing society growth would be one of my priorities. I have already served as chair of the Hinkle Grants Committee for the Paris Conference, as Hemingway Society Liaison to MLA and ALA, as director of a Hemingway Symposium at Misericordia University comprised of senior scholars and undergraduates, and as organizer of numerous Hemingway Society poetry readings. In all of this I have discovered the wonderful value in bringing both experienced and inexperienced scholars together for stimulating conversations, critical exchanges, and good fun!
My Hemingway scholarship includes a critical book Hemingway’s Dark Night, essays in North Dakota Quarterly, War + Ink, Ernest Hemingway in Context, and other books. I have presented conference papers at every International Hemingway Conference since 2004; and I serve on the Hemingway Review Editorial Board, as President of the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society, and as officer of the International Richard Aldington/Imagism Society.
I thrive by working hard and, if elected, will eagerly serve both the Board and the Society’s membership.
Alex Vernon
(Professor of English, Hendrix College)
I’ve been involved with Hemingway Studies and the Society for twenty years. I’ve had the privilege to serve on the board and as its secretary for the past six years. In that time, among our many initiatives and decisions, we launched the new website and revised the by-laws. I worked closely with the Board, with the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, and with Dominican University in organizing the 2016 conference. There is much still to be done—this is a very busy literary society board, and I am glad to be a part of its good work.
Long term, I would like us to pay increased attention to developing a more diverse and inclusive membership; I’m also concerned about where the next generation of scholars will come from. A student of mine who applied to graduate school last year visited a top-twenty program, where an Americanist faculty member asked—because of his A Farewell to Arms writing sample—“Who works on Hemingway anymore?” That’s a problem. My scholarship generally focuses on American war literature and film, and Hemingway’s place in that tradition. I've published two books on Hemingway, including Hemingway's Second War: Bearing Witness to the Spanish Civil War, and a number of essays on his work in the Review and elsewhere. I would characterize my approach as a healthy mix of historical-cultural studies (including gender & race), close reading, and archival work. I’m also signed up on a future Letters volume.
Raúl Villarreal
Coordinator for Cultural Programs at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida
Raúl serves on the Santa Fe Cultural Community Engagement Board, as well as on the Advisory Board for the Center for Latino Arts and Culture at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He is co-founder of the Neo-Latino Artists Collective and over the past 35 years Villarreal has exhibited his art in 20 one person exhibits and over 400 group exhibits in the United States, Canada, Cuba, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and China. In 2009, the Kent State University Press published Villarreal’s book, Hemingway’s Cuban Son, based on his father René’s memoirs of his friendship with the famous author. That same year the book was a Finalist in the Memoir Category for the Independent Book Award. Villarreal has presented the book in the U.S., Cuba, Spain, and Switzerland.
In 2017, Villarreal organized the Hemingway: Between Key West and Cuba conference at Santa Fe College and co-wrote, co-produced and narrated a 30-minute documentary of the same name, inspired by Hemingway's life and work between the two islands. Mr. Villarreal contributed in the production of Papa’s Place, a CBS Sunday Morning special on Ernest Hemingway in 1999 with Charles Osgood. He also collaborated with the PBS Masters Series production of Rivers to the Sea (2005), Cooper and Hemingway: The True Gens (2013) and Hemingway’s Sea (2018). Since the 1990s Villarreal has maintained a close relationship with the administration of the Ernest Hemingway Museum in Havana Cuba and has assisted numerous scholars from around the world on Hemingway’s life on the island. He would bring to the board a variety of cultural perspective and experience.
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