One True Podcast

We celebrate the new PBS documentary Hemingway by discussing this historic three-part series with its directors, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Our conversation covers Hemingway’s singular gifts as an artist, his burden of celebrity, his many complicated relationships, and the tragedy that coursed through his life. Burns and Novick describe the challenges of bringing such an outsized life to screen, f...

“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” is one of Hemingway’s greatest stories and one of his most controversial. Is the shocking death at the end of the story accidental manslaughter or cold-blooded murder? How should we read the ambiguous title? And what does Hemingway’s investigation into the psyches of the various characters – including the lion’s – reveal about this narrative and Hemingway...

In this episode, Boris Vejdovsky's true sentence from Hemingway's "Cat in the Rain" leads to an illuminating and wide-ranging conversation on narrative voice, American identity, and the bravery of simple language.

Ernest Hemingway never acknowledged the influence of any artist in any medium more generously than that of the French painter Paul Cézanne. From the 1920s, Hemingway’s character Nick Adams “wanted to write like Cézanne painted.” As an older writer, Hemingway visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art to gush about the painter's influence on his approach to writing.   One True Podcast turns to Car...

One True Podcast welcomes scholar Ross Tangedal for a spirited discussion about Hemingway’s 1923 publication, Three Stories & Ten Poems , including the incendiary early effort, “Up in Michigan.” Tangedal guides us through this slim volume as an underrated portrait of the artist as a young man. What does this early fiction tell us about the young Hemingway? Are there signs of his later mastery?...

Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and Love and Ruin , talks about her one true Hemingway sentence.

One True Podcast continues its exploration of Hemingway on film by welcoming the legendary actor Adrian Sparks to discuss his iconic portrayal of Hemingway in Papa: Hemingway in Cuba.  This film, released in 2015, made history as the first Hollywood production on the island since the trade embargo. Sparks describes the magical experience of using Hemingway’s actual typewriter as they filmed on loc...

Happy Holidays from One True Podcast!  Enjoy our first Holiday Spectacular as we ring in the season with Suzanne del Gizzo, scholar and editor of The Hemingway Review , to talk about Hemingway's decidedly un-festive short story, "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen." What was Hemingway getting at with that title?  Why would he write such a macabre story? How can that story speak to us at...

Mark P. Ott discusses his choice for Hemingway’s “one true sentence.”

Join us for an all-new One True Podcast as we welcome Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel to discuss the fifth volume of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway . The newest installment covers 1932 to 1934, where Hemingway is finishing his bullfighting manifesto, Death in the Afternoon ,  preparing his idiosyncratic book of short stories, Winner Take Nothing, and readying his chronicle of the hunt, Green...

One True Podcast welcomes Robert K. Elder, author of the entertaining and fascinating Hemingway in Comics . In this episode, we talk about how popular artists have depicted Hemingway across various cultures and the similarities that exist between the style of comics and the iceberg principle. Elder examines how international artists have depicted, Disney-fied, satirized, and mythologized Hemingway...

One True Podcast asks Verna Kale her choice for Hemingway’s “one true sentence.”  Kale's sentence comes from the short story "Soldier's Home."  Listen in!

One True Podcast was privileged to welcome Seán Hemingway – editor of the Hemingway Library Editions and the grandson of the writer – to discuss the new edition of The Old Man and the Sea . Hemingway discusses the legacy of the novella, its composition, and the new material published in the book, including “Pursuit as Happiness,” a previously unpublished short story.  Seán Hemingway also reflects...

One True Podcast welcomes award-winning director John Irvin to talk about his 2008 film adaptation of Hemingway's posthumous novel The Garden of Eden . Irvin discusses the role Hemingway played in his own artistic development, the challenges of adapting Hemingway, and The Garden of Eden’s controversial subject matter. He recalls experiences directing Jack Huston, Mena Suvari, Richard E. Grant...

One True Podcast asks Gail Sinclair her choice for Hemingway’s “one true sentence.”

One True Podcast welcomes Robert W. Trogdon to discuss his beautiful new publication, the Library of America edition of Hemingway’s early writing, from 1918-1926.  Trogdon discusses his role as a textual editor. He explains how he assembled Hemingway’s journalism and letters, and how his decision about punctuation in The Sun Also Rises will forever change how we read one of Hemingway’s most iconic...

One True Podcast understands that we all can’t get together at El Floridita and while away the afternoon telling stories and talking about Hemingway.  However, we can serve up our first batch of Papa Dobles for our listeners, a doubleheader of episodes dealing with Hemingway, Cuba, and the valuable work of the Finca Vigía Foundation.  In this first episode, we welcome Bob Vila, the legendary home...

One True Podcast understands that we all can’t get together at El Floridita and while away the afternoon telling stories and talking about Hemingway.  However, we can serve up our first batch of Papa Dobles for our listeners, a doubleheader of episodes dealing with Hemingway, Cuba, and the valuable work of the Finca Vigía Foundation. Earlier we met up with Bob Vila to talk about his preservation w...

One True Podcast asks Craig McDonald his choice for Hemingway’s “one true sentence.”

Join us as we talk with esteemed scholar Joe Flora about "The Battler," Hemingway's classic Nick Adams story from In Our Time . Flora, who is the author of the canonical Hemingway's Nick Adams and Ernest Hemingway: A Study of the Short Fiction and Past-President of the Hemingway Society, takes us into the Michigan woods to explore this compelling story about young Nick's e...

One True Podcast asks Carl P. Eby his choice for Hemingway’s “one true sentence.”

In Green Hills of Africa , the 1935 account of his safari, Hemingway made his most enduring statement of literary criticism. He wrote that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn . [. . .]  There was nothing before.  There has been nothing as good since." What does that mean? Is he right? Was there a strategy behind what seems to be a hig...

In an episode that is unfortunately too timely, One True Podcast welcomes Elizabeth Outka to discuss the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, writers' responses to it, and the way it compares to our current experience with COVID-19. Dr. Outka discusses Hemingway’s engagement with the so-called “Spanish influenza” (in works like "A Natural History of the Dead") as well as modernism’s broader depi...

One True Podcast is pleased to go down to the river with James Plath, Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University, to discuss one of Hemingway’s early masterpieces.   Plath discusses the many dimensions that contribute to the enduring appeal of "Big Two-Hearted River" by responding to such question as: Who is Nick Adams? What is the importance of the northern Michigan setting? H...

On this episode, we welcome to the show Jerry Fielder and Anne E. Havinga to discuss Yousuf Karsh's portrait of Hemingway, which is without a doubt the most iconic image of the writer.   Who was Karsh? What was the meeting like between him and Hemingway? Why does this photo, among all those taken of Hemingway (including the others Karsh took), hold such an important place?  Our two guests are...