When Ernest Hemingway was a teenager, his ambition was to become an explorer and natural history writer like his childhood hero, Teddy Roosevelt—an ambition nurtured by his physician father, who was himself an amateur naturalist. But the influence of his mother, a professional musician, and the family’s early adopter approach to emerging technologies (particularly in photography) positioned him to emerge from the crucible of World War I on a path to change the landscape of American letters.

Drawing on his personal papers and private photograph collection, Hemingway biographer Hilary Justice recreates how Hemingway worked, illustrating the writer’s process: Experience sparks inspiration, and creativity meets craft in service of “one true sentence.” From preserving his father’s family photographs and his own teenage documentaries of outdoor adventures through his youth in Paris to his physical breakdown in Africa and Cuba, Hemingway’s process served as his magnetic north throughout his eventful life. Justice is the Patrick and Carol T. Hemingway Scholar-in-Residence at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library's Ernest Hemingway Collection.

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