A stage adaptation of The Old Man and the Sea will premiere Friday, February 1^st, 2019.  Adapted by A.E. Hotchner and his son Tim Hotchner, directed by Ronald Allan-Lindblom, and starring Anthony Crivello as Santiago and David Cabot as Hemingway, the play will debut at Point Park University’s Pittsburgh Playhouse.  The production will run through February 17^th, 2019.

This year, the following debut novels have been selected as finalists for the PEN/Hemingway Award: Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater; Meghan Kenny’s The Driest Season: A Novel; Ling Ma’s Severance; Tommy Orange’s 

Historian Marino Perissinotto has identified the WWI soldier who inadvertently saved Hemingway’s life by taking the brunt of a mortar explosion on July 8^th, 1918.  By whittling down James McGrath Morris’s list of 18 candidates (see his postscript to The Ambulance Drivers), Perissonotto hypothesizes that Fedele Temperini, a 26-year-old soldier from Montalcino, was Hemingway's savior along the Piave.  For more details about Temperini and Perissinotto's historical research, see Morris’s recent 

Hemingway’s 1935 letter to Erl Roman, fishing editor of the Miami Herald, sold for $28,000 through Nate D. Sanders Auctions.  The letter details Hemingway’s fishing trip with Henry Strater, his capture of a 500 lb. marlin, and an ensuing battle with sharks, a pivotal event that helped inspire The Old Man and the Sea.  The letter also includes a photo of Hemingway, Strater, and the half-eaten marlin.