In the News

We are pleased to announce our inaugural writer-in-residence position. The residency will be for the month of June 2018 and includes lodging at a beautiful loft apartment on the downtown square in Piggott over the City Market coffee shop. The writer-in-residence will also have the opportunity to work in the studio where Ernest Hemingway worked on A Farewell to Arms during an extended stay with his wife’s family in 1928. The residency includes a $1000 stipend to help cover food and transportation.  Piggott State Bank is the underwriting sponsor of the residency.

The writer-in-residence will be expected to serve as mentor for a week-long retreat for writers at the educational center. This retreat will be held June 4-8 and will be open to 12-14 writers from the region. The recipient will be expected to hold one or two readings of his/her own work in the region. The remainder of the month will be free to the writer-in-residence to work on his/her own work.

Candidates with an MA or MFA in a relevant field are preferred. Please send a cover letter, CV, and writing sample to Dr. Adam Long at adamlong@astate.edu by Feb. 28, 2018. Questions can also be directed to Dr. Long.

The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center, an Arkansas State University Heritage Site, contributes to the understanding of the regional, national and global history of the 1920s and 1930s eras by focusing on the internationally connected Pfeiffer family of Piggott, Arkansas, and their son-in-law and regular guest Ernest Hemingway. This includes drawing on Hemingway’s influence as a noted American author to foster interest in literature and the arts and promote excellence in both.

Nine talented writers recently came together to hone their skills and form a bond at the annual writing retreat for military veterans. The event took place at the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center (HPMEC) at the site where author Ernest Hemingway penned much of his iconic war novel, A Farewell to Arms.

This weekend retreat was funded through a partnership with the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. Rob Lamm, professor of English at Arkansas State University, served as mentor for the retreat. Lamm, a mentor at other retreats at HPMEC, said, “This retreat is the highlight of my year. I get to work with talented writers of all sorts as they write about their experiences in the service.

“There was a nurse who wrote a beautiful eulogy for her grandmother. There was a man who wrote a deep and complex poem about his most recent divorce. There was a pilot who helped develop the dog-fight training program. There was a chaplain who in his own way helped to save lives. I felt a new comfort about our country.”

Lamm continued, “The best part was getting to know them personally. They continue to offer their wisdom and continue to serve through their writings.”

Writers began each day with exercises to get them started, often looking at samples of Hemingway’s writing as models for their own. They enjoyed lunch together at the Educational Center and ended the afternoon with a group meeting to reflect, share and discuss the processes used by each writer.

Between formal meetings, the writers had time to work individually, often in the same rooms where Hemingway wrote. The format allowed writers time to focus on their own creative interests, to receive feedback on their work, and to form relationships with other writers.

The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum has announced the winner of its 4th Annual Short Fiction Contest. Anushah Jiwani of Hendrix College was selected as winner for her story “Broken Tasbihs.” Of the story, the judge said, “This writer knows not only how to bring characters and places alive through the careful and articulate use of imagery, but she also delivers the story in compelling language and with fine attention to important technical matters like sentence structure and variety. Also important, of course, is the story’s subject: identity and the struggle to both understand and come to terms with being a person of more than one culture. ‘Broken Tasbihs’ is absorbing throughout and bespeaks a writer deserving of the prize.”  Anushah was selected from a field of submissions from undergraduate students at public and private institutions in the state of Arkansas.

Anushah is a senior at Hendrix College in Conway double-majoring in English-Creative Writing and International Relations. She was an editorial intern for the Readers’ Map of Arkansas project and for the Oxford American magazine, and last summer she served as a communications intern for PEN America in New York.  She recently took honors in the Southern Literary Festival Competition and won 3rd place in the statewide Jeannie Dolan Carter 2017 Collegiate Poetry Contest sponsored by the Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas. Much of Anushah’s writing centers on the duality of her Pakistani-American identity.

This year’s contest was judged by Andrea Hollander, the author of four full-length poetry collections: Landscape with Female Figure: New & Selected Poems, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; Woman in the Painting; The Other Life; and House Without a Dreamer, which won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Other honors include an Oregon Literary Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes (in poetry and prose memoir), the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, the Runes Poetry Prize, two poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the Arkansas Arts Council. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, college textbooks, and literary journals. For twenty-two years she served as the Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College, where she was awarded the Lamar Williamson Prize for Excellence in Teaching. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches workshops at the Attic Institute and Mountain Writers Series.

On Saturday, March 4, the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum hosted Papa’s Upland Bird Hunt and Dinner at Liberty Hill Outfitters in Rector. The hunt celebrated Ernest Hemingway’s hunting legacy in Northeast Arkansas.

Ernest Hemingway was a regular visitor of his in-laws, the Pfieffer family of Piggott, Arkansas. One of his favorite pastimes during his visits was quail hunting on Crowley’s Ridge. On March 4, twenty hunters from around the country came to Crowley’s Ridge to hunt and share a quail dinner. The hunt, a Continental style pheasant hunt, was hosted by Liberty Hill Outfitters. Chow at One Eighteen prepared the quail dinner.

Museum Director Adam Long said that this hunt is expected to become an annual event. He said, “This was our first charity hunt, and we had a great time. We expect to host another hunt next year.” He continued, “The folks at Liberty Hill and Chow did a great job in making the event a success. We are also very thankful to our sponsors for their help.”

This event was sponsored by First National Bank-Piggott, Glaub Farm Management, LLC, State Representative Joe Jett (paid for by State Representative Joe Jett), Olympus Construction, Inc., and Piggott State Bank.

To receive information about future hunts, please contact us.