A Writer (1899-1929)

Often fishing and hunting with his father as a young boy, Ernest Hemingway fostered a love for the great outdoors and hoped to become a naturalist like his hero Theodore Roosevelt. As a teenager, he was a passionate reader and took up writing at his school's literary magazine. His mother encouraged him to practice his art, helping form the strict writers' discipline he maintained into adulthood.

During WWI, Ernest Hemingway joined the Red Cross Ambulance Service where he was sent to Italy, helping to gather the dead and tend to wounded soldiers. On July 8, 1918, while volunteering to pass out chocolate bars to men at a forward listening post, he was caught in the blast of an enemy mortar shell, injured by over 220 pieces of shrapnel, and was subsequently shot by an enemy machine gunner.

Based out of Paris as a correspondent for The Toronto Star, Hemingway often traveled across Europe for assignments. While in Switzerland covering the Greco-Turkish War, he met Lincoln Steffens, who expressed interest in reading more of the young writer's work. This interaction and events following would lead to the loss of two years of work that greatly impacted his relationship with Hadley.

Edna O'Brien reads a passage from Ernest Hemingway's "Up in Michigan." She challenges the idea that the author, who wrote from the perspective of character Liz Coates in this short story, hated women.

In 1925, Ernest and Hadley Hemingway traveled to Pamplona for the annual running of the bulls. While following the bullfights across Spain, Hemingway would write "The Sun Also Rises," told from the perspective of character Jake Barnes, a war veteran, and inspired by events that transpired during their time in Pamplona with friends.