One True Podcast

Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet and My Life as a Foreign Country, joins us to talk about his one true sentence from The Old Man and the Sea.

Meet us at rue Delambre for a memorable chat with Sarah Churchwell about the way Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast has shaped the way we think about the Hemingway-Fitzgerald relationship. What are the repercussions of Hemingway getting the last word on the Fitzgerald legacy? How much of what Hemingway wrote is even true? What were Hemingway’s strategies as he described himself, Fitzgerald, Zelda, and even Bumby in the alcohol-soaked distant memories of 1920s Paris? And is the butterfly epigraph a backhanded compliment or a forehanded insult?  Sarah Churchwell -- author of the excellent Gatsby study, Careless People – takes us deep into the drafting, editing, and legacy of A Moveable Feast and its powerful role in defining the enduring popular conception of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

We are joined by Ryan Hediger to get to the bottom of Hemingway's genre-bending and gruesomely descriptive "A Natural History of the Dead."First published in Hemingway's bullfighting treatise Death in the Afternoon in 1932 and then reprinted a year later in Winner Take Nothing, this work gives us a chance to consider Hemingway's treatment of death in his work, as well as the artist's obligation to depict violence with a scientific objectivity. Hediger discusses the way "A Natural History of the Dead" simultaneously satirizes the nature writers that preceded Hemingway, while also providing a window into Hemingway's own complex engagement with the natural world.

Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness, Deep Creek, and Contents May Have Shifted, joins us to talk about her one true Hemingway sentence. 

We usher in 2022 by exploring what Hemingway was doing one hundred years ago. Mary V. Dearborn, the author of Ernest Hemingway: A Biography, joins the show to discuss Hemingway’s writing from 1922, his formative experiences as a journalist, and the notorious lost manuscripts last seen in Paris’s Gare de Lyon. For literary modernism, 1922 is an annus mirabilis, and we celebrate Hemingway’s own 1922, as he makes his first steps onto the global stage. Happy New Year, everybody, and happy listening! 

Ring in the season with One True Podcast! Hemingway Review editor Suzanne del Gizzo joins us on our holiday show for the second year in a row. For this episode, we discuss Hemingway’s charming 1923 article for the Toronto Daily Star, “Christmas on the Roof of the World,” his chronicle of a skiing idyll in the Swiss Alps with his wife Hadley and “Chink” Dorman-Smith.We discuss the article’s fascinating prose style, its uncharacteristic tone, and the placement of this obscure piece in Hemingway’s career. Our conversation also considers Hemingway’s biography in the winter of 1922-23, the setting of this skiing getaway. As a bonus, del Gizzo offers up her “one true sentence” from “"Big Two-Hearted River" to round out the episode. Also, enjoy a musical performance by University of Evansville students Kate Maue, Alyssa DeCorrevont, and Rachel Taylor. Happy Holidays from One True Podcast!

Sherman Alexie, the award-winning writer, poet, and filmmaker whose works include The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Reservation Blues, joins us to talk about his one true Hemingway sentence from "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber."

Stop by Henry’s lunch-room as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the adaptation of The Killers with legendary film historian James Naremore. We discuss the legacy of the film, the difficulty of adapting Hemingway’s writing, what makes this movie a noir classic, the performances of megastars Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner, and so much more.Hemingway once said that he enjoyed watching the movie “when I want to see Miss Gardner and hear the shooting.” He also called it “the only good picture ever made of a story of mine.” So, pull up a chair and join us for the big dinner!This episode was recorded on April 2, 2021.

Debra Moddelmog shares her one true sentence from Hemingway's short story "The Sea Change."

Join us as we welcome Janet Somerville, author of Yours, for Probably Always, for a fascinating discussion about Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn is most often remembered and depicted as Ernest Hemingway's third wife, but she was also a novelist, war correspondent, activist, and iconoclast. Somerville guides us through the life of this trailblazer: her childhood in St. Louis, a close relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, that notorious first encounter with Hemingway in a Key West bar, her tumultuous life during and after her marriage to Hemingway, and her formidable writing career.  Listen for clips from the audio book of Yours, for Probably Always, with readings performed by Emmy and Tony-winning actress Ellen Barkin.  So pull up a chair at Sloppy Joe's and enjoy the show!