Paul Hendrickson, a writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak on “Looking for Hemingway through the Prism of the Pilar,” based on his work-in-progress on Hemingway’s fishing cruiser, Pilar. Hendrickson will be at the Ernest Hemingway Museum, 200 N. Oak Park Avenue, in Oak Park for the 2009 Hemingway Birthday Lecture on Tuesday, July 21, at 7:00 p.m. Regular admission is $10; $8 for members and seniors. Following the lecture and discussion, guests will enjoy singing “Happy Birthday” to Ernest Hemingway who was born in Oak Park on July 21, 1899, some 110 years ago. For tickets, please call The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park at (708) 848-2222 or E-mail ehfop@sbcglobal.net.
In October 2008, Hendrickson spoke at the Michigan Hemingway Conference on what he called “watery antecedents.” His program reviewed Hemingway’s boyhood experiences along the Des Plaines River near Oak Park and in Michigan. Some of the research was done in The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park Archives with assistance from board members Barbara Ballinger, Redd Griffin, and others.
Hendrickson received the 2005 Provost’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Penn, where he conducts writing workshops in advanced nonfiction. His published books include Sons of Mississippi, winner of the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award in general nonfiction and also the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize. He is also the author of Seminary: a Search, (based on his study for seven years for the missionary priesthood), Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott (National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in 1992), and The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (National Book Award finalist in 1996).
Hendrickson was a journalist for more than 30 years, working for most of that time as a staff feature writer at the Washington Post. He has degrees in literature from St. Louis University and Pennsylvania State University. He lives in Havertown, Pennsylvania.
