Idahoans foster a special connection with late American author and journalist Ernest Hemingway, who spent the end of his life in Idaho. To celebrate a fellowship that dates 50 years, the University of Idaho and the Moscow community will gather for the annual Hemingway Festival.

Hemingway’s work has inspired countless writers around the world, especially the English department at the University of Idaho. UI professor and Hemingway scholar Ron McFarland said Hemingway changed the literary scene forever for American writers.

“The apparent simplicity and ease of his writing sometimes just punches you in the gut and other times stabs your heart,” McFarland said. “He can be amazingly poignant and tough at the same time. No one could do dialogue the way he could, and I’m not sure anyone can match him even today.”

McFarland also said no American writer has ever had the international and cosmopolitan impact Hemingway has had.

“I think it’s no exaggeration at all to say his world reputation is higher than his reputation in the U.S. and probably always will be,” he said.

Regardless of Hemingway’s global success, the University of Idaho celebrates him in more ways than one. The university has an established Ernest Hemingway Foundation and Society, a Hemingway Alliance, and an annual Hemingway Festival.

UI professor Kim Barnes said she was a part of the planning committee for the first Hemingway Festival six years ago.

“The marriage between Hemingway and the UI English department represents the combined effort to understand Hemingway at the scholarly level and artistic level,” Barnes said. “One of our greatest values in the department is to approach (Hemingway’s work) from both angles and give students a very unique learning opportunity.”

The festival began as a way to tie the university’s connection with Hemingway to the community’s writers and to show support for aspiring authors, Barnes said.

“The community was a big part in helping support our ideas, and we had a wonderful response to help fund the festival,” Barnes said. “I look forward to it every year.”

The festival begins Tuesday with a reading at BookPeople from Ron McFarland about his book “Appropriating Hemingway.” McFarland said it has to do with popular fiction, poems, plays, and films in which Hemingway appears as a character or a crazed Hemingway fan.

“It involves what some call fan fiction,” McFarland said. “Some of it is quite good, sophisticated and insightful, and some is not.”

Later Tuesday, the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre will play a film called “Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man,” which is free and open to the public.

Following the film will be a Hemingway Cocktail Hour and the Moveable Feast, a multi-course meal inspired by Hemingway’s work that will be catered by Gnosh. The feast is titled after Hemingway’s memoir, “A Moveable Feast,” about his time spent in Paris in the 1920s, which was not published until after his death.

The Moveable Feast menu includes items such as oysters, wild rabbit, scented squash soup, and a dessert of toffee cake with poached apples and spiced bourbon caramel. Tickets for the feast are $85 and proceeds help to support the Hemingway Fellow’s writing.

The Hemingway Fellow is a third or final year graduate student in the University of Idaho’s creative writing program that is selected by the creative writing staff each year.

“Students must apply, and it’s a very competitive process, and it’s always a difficult decision,” Barnes said. “It’s a wonderful process, but I wish we could have more than one.”

The winner receives $1,000, travels to Boston for an award ceremony, and does not have to teach during their reigning year. Current Hemingway Fellow Max Eberts said receiving the award has allowed him to focus more on his thesis project and use his scholarship to fuel his work.

“I wish all of my third-year classmates had a Hemingway Fellowship, so they didn’t have to teach undergraduate courses but rather could focus on their writing the way I’ve been able to,” Eberts said. “The fellowship has been a real gift – the gift of time.”

Since winning the award, Eberts has volunteered to help with the implementation and execution of the Hemingway festival.

“It’s been a fun experience,” Eberts said. “It’s a great outreach moment with the community and all the events take place right here in Moscow.”

On the third day of the festival, Eberts gets the unique opportunity to read some of his work and introduce the current Hemingway Foundation and PEN Award-winner, NoViolet Bulawayo. The PEN Award celebrates outstanding writers and spans an array of genres, recognizing both distinguished and emerging authors. UI invites the winner to appear at the festival each year to read their work, and the reading is free to the public.

“This creates a mentorship between the award-winning author and this young author just beginning to put his or her work into the world,” Barnes said. “This connection is one of the most valuable parts of the fellowship.”

McFarland said that although the feast is usually terrific, the reading by this year’s PEN winner is the grand and crowning event of the festival.

A full list of the festival’s events is available on the University of Idaho’s website.