International Imitation Hemingway Competition

International Imitation Hemingway Competition

Also known as "The Bad Hemingway Contest," The International Imitation Hemingway Competition is an annual writing competition held in Century City, California. Held for nearly thirty years, the festival pays mock homage to Ernest Hemingway by encouraging authors to submit a humorous "bad" writing in a Hemingway-esque style. Entrants were asked to submit a 'really good page of really bad Hemingway.'

Previous submissions have included such titles as "The Old Man and the Flea," and "The Bug Count also Rises," and "Across the Suburbs and Into the Express Lane," and "The Short, Happy Life of Frances' Comb."

The contest was often sponsored by Harry's Bar & American Grill in in Century City, Calif., as well as the PEN Center West and the contest entrants had two rules: mention Harry's Bar & Grill (the Venetian Harry's was long one of Hemingway's favorite watering holes) and be funny. Prizes were generally round-trip trickets and dinner for two at Harry's in Italy many writers and Hemingway fans were fanatical about the contest.

Hemingway's spare writing style has been often been imitated over the years even before the contest, and two anthologies of Imitation Hemingway have been published (The Best of Bad Hemingway, Volumes I & II) and include contest winners as well as satires of Hemingway written by E. B. White, Raymond Chandler, F. Scott Fitzgerald and George Plimpton.

In addition to the humor of the contest, there is great irony in its existence as Hemingway famously said: "The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal." Nevertheless, the contest had thousands of dedicated fans among writers and Hemingway fans and many illustrious literary figures judged the contest over the years, including Jack Hemingway, Digby Diehl, Ray Bradbury, Barnaby Conrad, George Plimpton, A. Scott Berg, Joseph Wambaugh & Bernice Kert.

ee also

[http://www.2camels.com/international-imitation-hemingway-competition.php International Imitation Hemingway Competition article]

[http://www.scottstavrou.com/hemingwayaward.html 2000 International Imitation Hemingway Award Winner]


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