One True Podcast

The great Italian scholar Martina Mastandrea discusses “In Another Country,” one of Hemingway’s finest short stories.  After Mastandrea treats us to an Italian rendition of the famous opening paragraph, we explore the many treasures of the story: Why did F. Scott Fitzgerald admire the first sentence of the story so much? Is this a Nick Adams story? What does it tell us about Hemingway's persp...

Naomi Wood, author of Mrs. Hemingway , shares her one true sentence from a letter Hemingway wrote to friends Gerald and Sara Murphy after the death of their son, Baoth, in 1935. 

Happy New Year from One True Podcast !  We usher in 2023 with our new year's tradition of wondering what Ernest Hemingway was doing one hundred years ago. In 1923, what was Hemingway writing? Where did he live? Who were his friends and enemies? How was his marriage going?  And what was on the horizon? To answer these questions, we turn to his biographer, James M. Hutchisson, emeritus professo...

We welcome back Suzanne del Gizzo to ring in the season with a discussion of “The Christmas Gift,” Hemingway’s account of his 1954 plane crashes in East Africa. Del Gizzo, editor of The Hemingway Review and widely published scholar, guides us through this extraordinary piece originally written for Look magazine, its role in Hemingway’s self-mythologizing, its examination of his near-death experien...

Michael Mewshaw, author of numerous novels and nonfiction works (including Year of the Gun , The Lost Prince , and the forthcoming My Man in Antibes: Getting to Know Graham Greene ) shares his one true sentence from Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms .

We are joined by legendary scholar Jackson Bryer, who explains the origins and implications of a notorious concept: the Hemingway code.   When the code was introduced in the 1950s by influential scholar Philip Young, what did he intend it to mean? What is a "code hero"? What is a "Hemingway hero"? What did Hemingway mean by “grace under pressure”? Bryer helps us explore the imp...

We welcome prolific scholar Don Daiker to help us celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Nick Adams Stories. We discuss the volume’s impact and legacy, Philip Young’s controversial editorial decisions, the sequencing, and the characterization of Nick himself, in all of his various phases. Which stories does Daiker consider underrated? Is Dr. Adams unjustly criticized as cold...

Joshua Ferris, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for his novel Then We Came to the End , joins us to discuss his one true sentence from  The Sun Also Rises .

One hundred years ago, in September 1922, Turkish forces torched the port city of Smyrna in a hellish episode towards the end of the Greco-Turkish War. The ensuing evacuation, with its chaos and grisly violence, inspired Hemingway’s journalism as well as his short fiction. Hemingway’s most enduring effort to capture this atrocity is "On the Quai at Smyrna," which would become the first s...

We are asking the entire One True Podcast community to contribute to the Hurricane Ian relief effort. Our production studios are in Fort Myers, Florida, which took the brunt of the storm, so we want to do anything we can to lend a hand. This episode honors the recovery effort by urging our listeners to go to www.communitycooperative.com and give generously to provide direct help to those who suffe...

Kawai Strong Washburn, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for his novel Sharks in the Time of Saviors , joins us to discuss his one true sentence from "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."

Timothy Christian, author of Hemingway's Widow: The Life and Legacy of Mary Welsh Hemingway , joins us for a conversation about Hemingway's fourth and final wife.  Our wide-ranging interview covers Mary's life before, during, and after Hemingway. We explore Mary's family, her early life and education, including her impressive career as a journalist. We cover her first encounter...

One True Podcast examines the deadly category 5 hurricane that ravaged the Florida Keys over Labor Day weekend in 1935, both from a historical perspective and a fictional treatment. We first hear from historian Thomas Neil Knowles, author of Category 5: The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, who describes the deadly weather system, its devastating toll on the veterans stationed along the Keys, the bureaucr...

Billy Collins, the author of numerous collections of poetry and the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003 , shares his one true sentence from "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."

In this live interview from the 19th Biennial Hemingway Society Conference in Sheridan, Wyoming, we talk with John Sutton and Chris Warren about Hemingway's summers spent in Wyoming and Montana and how his experiences in the American West left their mark on his stories and novels. John Sutton is the director of the NEH “Creating Humanities Communities along Wyoming's Hemingway Highway” G...

Craig Johnson, author of the widely celebrated Longmire series, shares his one true sentence from "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."

In the lead-up to the Hemingway Society conference in Wyoming and Montana, we welcome Darla Worden to explore some fascinating connections between Hemingway and the American West. Worden is the author of the book Cockeyed Happy: Ernest Hemingway's Wyoming Summers with Pauline . She's also the founder and director of the Left Bank Writers Retreat in Paris and the Wyoming Writers Retreat....

Jennifer Haigh, author of Mrs. Kimble and Mercy Street , joins us to talk about her one true sentence from the short story "Mr. and Mrs. Elliot."

In 1986, twenty-five years after Hemingway’s death, Scribner’s published a coherent portion of his sprawling manuscript called The Garden of Eden. This publication changed the way we view Hemingway’s engagement with gender and sexuality, and remains his most daring novel ever.  In order to make that novel publishable, Scribner’s called on a gentleman named Tom Jenks to do the editing. Jenks hauled...

Today’s episode investigates two largely forgotten figures from Hemingway’s past: Lewis Galantière and Guy Hickok. Galantière was a critic who befriended Hemingway in the early Paris years, and they maintained a friendship and correspondence for many years. Hickok was Hemingway’s journalist buddy who accompanied him through Italy for the notorious March 1927 trip that spawned “Che Ti Dice La Patri...

David Frum, staff writer at The Atlantic , author of numerous books including Trumpocracy and Trumpocalypse , and speechwriter for President George W. Bush, joins us to talk about his one true sentence from A Farewell to Arms .

Andrew Feldman joins us to talk about his book Ernesto: The Untold Story of Hemingway in Revolutionary Cuba.   What did Cuba mean to Papa and what has Papa meant to Cuba? To explore the place where Hemingway spent much of his adult life and Ernest became Ernesto, we discuss Hemingway's relationship to the Cuban people, his engagement with Cuban politics, and some of his greatest works, includ...

Hemingway’s first book of short stories, In Our Time , is the most experimental work of his career and his most challenging. It is also an early masterpiece, with brutal, opaque stories like “Indian Camp,” “The Battler,” and "Soldier's Home." For this episode, we are joined by J. Gerald Kennedy, editor of the new Norton Critical Edition of In Our Time , to discuss the emergence of t...

Michael Katakis, photographer and author of A Thousand Shards of Glass , Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts from a Life , and Dangerous Men , joins us to talk about his one true sentence from the short story "Indian Camp."

The pride of Arkansas, Ruth A. Hawkins, joins the show for an illuminating episode on Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer. Hawkins draws from her definitive book Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow to discuss Pfeiffer’s family and upbringing, her controversial friendship with Hadley, her marriage to Ernest, her motherhood, the mysterious details of her death, and her legacy.  Although th...