On the Circuit

September has come and I'm back on the road giving talks. On Tuesday September 11, I'll be the featured speaker at the Town Hall luncheon meeting in Denver. The subject will be my memoir, Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways. There seems to be an inexhaustible interest in Ernest Hemingway, his life and work.

On September 22nd I'll give a talk to a private group at the Hemingway House in Ketchum, Idaho. The occasion will be a special fundraiser dinner to benefit the Nature Conservancy and the Hemingway House which will take place during the Sun Valley Hemingway Festival.

In August I gave my memoir writing workshop to a group of forty in White Sulphur Springs, Montana as part of the Meagher County Bookfest. The workshop was so successful I was invited to give similar sessions in Great Falls and Fort Benton.

The second weekend in August I spoke at the Irish festival, An Ri Ra, in Butte. It is one of the more colorful Montana summer festivals, covering all aspects of Irish culture. Particularly endearing are the Irish step dancing performances by children from three years up. The music, much of it imported from Ireland, was fabulous.

Oxford in August

You may have been wondering what happened to me. On the spur of the moment I accepted an invitation to attend a wedding at Birmingham University (England) mid-August and was rewarded additionally with the offer to housesit a beautiful cottage and garden in Oxford. I returned to Bozeman last night, very much exhilarated by my experience.

Birmingham was drizzling with rain, but a few forays to the countryside of Shropshire and Wales brought me to various rustic establishments including a two hundred year old cider mill, stilll pressing away as it distills a fine rich hard cider, once meted out to the field workers at a quantity of five gallons a day to get them through the harvesting. The tap water was unsafe so the cider quenched the thirst and spurred the peons on. Every inch of England is fraught with history.

August is tourist time in Oxford, but I was fortunate that my old school chum, Delphine Kelly, came over from Dublin to spend a few days with me. You will have read about Delphine in my memoir. We had not seen each other in sixteen years. She and her husband had spent five years at Oxford as a young married couple when John Kelly was a Don at Trinity College. Delphine showed me around all the authentic spots, and noted where her two oldest boys romped around on the college lawns and scampered over stone walls. We went to Blenheim Palace where Winston Churchill was born and were intrigued by a new kind of museum entertainment, a historical drama featuring former inhabitants of Blenheim, enacted by means of life sized wax figures and video beamed through mirrors and picture frames. All was automated, as doors opened electronically to let us through to the next scene of the drama. Quite a production! I've seen nothing like it in the U.S.

I was very fortunate to catch up with two people I had hoped to see, both Elspeth Huxley connections. C.S. Nicholls wrote a wonderful biography of Elspeth, and Tanzanian artist, zoologist, anthropologist, Jonathan Kingdom, who has done some remarkable work and who was introduced to me by Elspeth twelve years ago. More about these people will be revealed on another occasion.

I'm off to the magnificent van Cleve ranch in the Big Timber Canyon for the Labor Day weekend. Hope you're having as much fun as I am.

Ernest Hemingway's Havana Home Restored

My article on revisiting Cuba and the restoration of the Hemingway home in Havana appears in the current issue of Smithsonian Magazine, August 2007. So far the responses have been positive.

I have just returned from a conference in Vienna, a beautiful city, lighthearted, filled with the music of Mozart and Strauss, palaces and museums, trolley cars and river boats cruising the Danube.

Memoir Writing Workshop
August 4th, 2007 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Meagher County Bookfest in White Sulphur Springs, Montana

Come join my five hour memoir writing workshop if you're in the area.


Butte Irish Festival
August 10th, 11th, 12th

I'll be giving a talk at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday August 11th, following artist, writer, publisher, Russell Chatham, at the lively Irish festival in Butte. If you have a touch of the Blarney, it is an occasion not to be missed.

Article in Smithsonian

My article came out in the Smithsonian magazine which you can find at www.smithsonianmagazine.com.

There is also an author profile which is a bit more freeform than I would have liked; you can find it here.

Interview w/CubanHeadlines.Com

Here is an interview I did for CubaHeadlines.com.

Independence Day in Montana

Distinctly Montana's summer issue appeared on the stands on July 2nd just as I was about to join the McNamer clan in Red Lodge to celebrate July 4th. I brought several copies of that glorious glossy magazine of Montana life with me to the reunion because my profile of their cousin, Missoula novelist Deirdre McNamer, appears alongside some funky photos of her taken by photographer Steven Begleiter (Page 46). The piece coincided with the publication of Deirdre's fourth novel RED ROVER (Viking Penguin) which already has received high acclaim from fellow writers, Richard Ford, Alice Munro, Jim Harrison and Tom McGuane. Set in Montana and loosely based on family history with a twist of mystery, I recommend that you put RED ROVER on your summer reading list.

Today I received an advance copy of the August issue of Smithsonian Magazine with my article: "Hemingway's Cuba, Cuba's Hemingway" inside (page 66). It will hit the news stands on July 26th, and your mailbox if you have a subscription before that. More on this in my next dispatch.

I'm heading out to Vienna (Austria, where else?) to attend a conference tomorrow. I include the country because when I first came to Montana in 1980 the local newspaper seemed to be filled with inconsequential items with international datelines. I learned about happenings in Glasgow, Amsterdam, Manhattan and Moscow. It took me some time to realize these places were within a pony ride of where I lived, hence the interest in broken fences and lost dogs. Will return on the 27th.

August will be a merry month. I'm giving an all day memoir writing workshop at the White Sulphur Springs Bookfest on Saturday August 4th. The following Saturday, August 11th I'll be talking in Butte at An Ri Ra, the famed Irish Festival. My gig follows that of the renowned artist, writer, publisher, gourmet, and former restauranteur, Russell Chatham. See you in Butte at 3:30 pm on August 11th.

What's New in Big Sky Country?

The summer social scene is in full swing in this corner of Montana. This weekend I attended two art shows, a pre-wedding barbeque and and a thirtieth wedding anniversary party, the last at the McGuane ranch in Sweet Grass County.
Tom McGuane's lead review of OUT STEALING HORSES by Per Petterson appeared in The New York Times Book Review the same day. Everyone here is reading his latest book, a collection of short stories called GALLATIN CANYON.

Note: the hard cover edition of my memoir RUNNING WITH THE BULLS, no longer available through the publisher, can now be purchased through my website: valeriehemingway@valeriehemingway.com. I would be happy to autograph and personalize each book for you. The paperback can still be purchased in the usual way through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.