• Baylor English prof’s book named year’s best debut fiction

    Arna Hemenway

    A Baylor English professor has won the nation’s top award for a debut fiction writer, and it almost seems a bit like destiny.

    Arna Hemenway, an assistant professor who teaches creative writing in the English department, was awarded this year’s PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. The award is the nation’s largest award for an author’s first work of fiction, featuring a $20,000 prize, and carries the prestige of the great Hemingway name.

    Hemenway won the award for his book Elegy on Kinderklavier, a collection of short stories that focus on people facing loss or challenges in their lives. In the novella, a young couple deals with their son’s terminal brain tumor; other stories feature soldiers in Iraq and soldiers returning from war.

    In receiving this honor, Hemenway receives a meaningful recognition from the Hemingway family. The PEN/Hemingway Award was started by Ernest Hemingway’s wife, the late Mary Hemingway. The Hemingway family continues to fund the award; Hemingway’s son, Patrick, presented the award to Hemenway this past weekend in Boston.

    If you thought that Hemenway’s name seems to foreshadow his career as a writer, your intuition is more accurate than you may even know. That Hemenway won a Hemingway Award certainly grabs attention, but his nearly-identical last name to the Nobel Prize-winning author isn’t even the most direct literary reference in his name. His full name is Arna Bontemps Hemenway, in honor of Arna Bontemps, an acclaimed novelist and poet who was a key member of the Harlem Renaissance.

    Hemenway’s prestigious award is yet another example of a Baylor professor receiving top honors in his or her chosen field; Baylor students need look no further than their own classrooms to meet top performers in just about any field they choose as they pursue their calling.

    Sic ’em, Arna Bontemps Hemenway!