Pop-Up Book Fair at Hemingway Museum

The Pop-Up Book Fair at the Hemingway Museum in Oak Park on Saturday, April 12 was a huge success. I arrived there in the morning to help setup a table for the literary journal Chicago Quarterly Review. In addition to helping out CQR, whose editorial mission has been beautifully described in this blog, I was eager to take a look at other magazines, small presses, and bookstores that had set up booths; I was also excited for the opportunity to talk with Don Evans, founder and executive director of my favorite Chicago literary organization, the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Three Hall of Fame interns (Julia Jakubow, Benjamin Willians and Kelly Conger) were also working that morning and into the afternoon.

Ernest Hemingway Museum (Photo by Julia Jakubow)

The energy at the Book Fair was vibrant and open. People were friendly! This made it easy to talk. Don and I discussed everything from the importance of doughnut holes at conferences – very important, yes – to the challenges of blog writing – many challenges for newcomers like me, yes – to the brilliance of Hemingway’s writing and his genius for self-determination. Hemingway’s powerful, minimalist style required a degree of dedication and stamina that I had read about but not quite understood until after talking to Don, looking at excerpts of Hemingway manuscripts on display, and listening to the various panels.

The panels began with a conversation on "all things comics" between Chris Ware and Hilary Chute, flowed into a reading by William Hazelgrove from his most recent novel, The Pitcher, and then another panel about fiction based on Hemingway’s life led by Don Evans, who asked questions of Dr. Nancy Sindelar and Dr. Michelle Moore. Later in the afternoon, author of Influencing Hemingway Nancy Sindelar continued with a discussion of her Hemingway work, followed by award winning writer Rey Andújar who read from his novel, Saturnalia.

CLHOF founder Don Evans and EHFOP
board member Nancy Sindelar.
(Photo by Julia Jakubow). 

For anyone involved in the literary scene as a writer, editor or passionate reader, going to this Book Fair is like stumbling and then falling into a gold mine. More than 40 independent Chicago publishers were represented, and it was impossible not to make happy discoveries and network in the best sense of that word.

As for the museum, it is housed in a beautiful building that makes organizing a vast amount of Hemingway information look easy. The staff is helpful, and answers questions about one of our country’s most important, profoundly influential writers quite effortlessly. Hemingway lovers, and even Hemingway haters, do make the pilgrimage!

This Pop-Up Book Fair was sponsored by The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, the Oak Park Public Library, Curbside Splendor and 826CHI. Heartfelt thanks for their help in pulling together Chicago’s literary community.

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Natalia Nebel is a co-director, along with Alexandra Sheckler and Christine Sneed, of the literary reading series Sunday Salon Chicago. In addition, she reads short story submissions for Drunken Boat, and serves on the ShawChicago Theater Company board of directors. An author and a translator of Italian language into English, her short stories, book reviews and translations have been published in a variety of journals, including TriQuarterly, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Chicago Quarterly Review and Free Verse.