Which famous 'old man' author loved Wyoming? 

Ernest Hemingway--cherished author of A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Old Man in the Sea and many more--called Wyoming "damn lovely country."

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According to the National Endowment for the Humanities, while staying at a ranch in the Bighorn Mountains in 1928, Hemingway wrote about 600 pages while his second wife caught 600 trout. The magazine chronicled that while in Wyoming, Hemingway once served his friends a lunch of bear steaks cooked medium rare, sandwiched between sourdough pancakes with marmalade. "The meat was rank and stringy..." but Hemingway ate it with "gusto...his black beard glossy with bear fat."

In his fictional short story, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," published in 1936, he drew from Wyoming's sage brush, the summer cattle that were  "shy as deer," and the clear, sharp mountains. It is obvious to me why he is one of the most beloved serious writers of the Twentieth Century.

For those of you who are fans of Hemingway, the 2022 International Hemingway Society Conference will go from Sunday, July 17 to Wednesday, July 20. It will be held at the Sheridan College in the Whitney Building.

The conference will include academic discourse, poetry readings, and special presentations from award-winning authors such as Craig Johnson, Kevin Powers, Judy Slack, Robert Eldger, and Darla Worden. Also, there will be trivia, live music, Hemingway-inspired drinks, and lots of good food.

The conference will continue in Cooke City, Montana from Thursday, July 21 through Sunday, July 24, 2022.

Register yourself and your companions for the full conference (Sheridan, WY and Cooke City, MT). The international Hemingway Society is offering a discount to Wyoming residents to attend a portion of the conference, and cancellations are fully refundable through June 16, 2022.

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