Great piece in The Star about Marianne's novel, We Were the Bullfighters
And about Hemingway's time in Toronto
Postcard of Toronto and Hemingway’s passport from Toronto Public Library:
“Ernest Hemingway’s time in Toronto working for the Toronto Star sparks a first-time novel”
by Janet Somerville
Author Marianne Miller was intrigued by Hemingway’s first assignment as a staff reporter: covering the escape of five inmates from Kingston Penitentiary.
It was September 1923, and Ernest Hemingway and his wife had arrived in Toronto from Paris, awaiting the birth of their first child. Although Ernest had been happily working as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star in Europe since late 1921, he had been hired as a staff reporter under the grudging direction of Harry Hindmarsh, the paper’s bullying editor.
On his first day of work, Hindmarsh sent Hemingway on a night train to Kingston to cover the story of five convicts who escaped from the penitentiary, including the already notorious bank robber Norman “Red” Ryan.
Author Marianne Miller came across that information while researching what was meant to be a non-fiction book about the famous author’s time in Toronto.…
Read the rest in The Toronto Star here.
We Were the Bullfighters is available from Chapters/Indigo here.
Janet Somerville is the author of Yours, for Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters of Love & War 1930-1949. You can read more about Janet’s book or buy it at Indigo here.
See all Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and four-day retreats here.