Major Works
- A World Turned Over: A Killer Tornado and the Lives It Changed Forever (non-fiction) (2002)
- Walk on Water: A Memoir (1998) non-fiction
- Walking into the River: A Novel (1992)
Biography of Lorian Hemingway
Lorian Hemingway is the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway. She was born on December 15, 1951 in Jackson, Mississippi. Her childhood years were spent in several southern states – Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and Arkansas.
The Florida Keys are the setting for her memoir, Walk on Water. This autobiography was published by Simon and Schuster, who also published her first novel Walking Into the River. The novel is the story of Eva and depicts a “woman’s tragic surrender into the family cycle of alcoholism and her courage to prevail.”
Like the main character Eva, Lorian Hemingway had a mother who abused alcohol and a violent stepfather; they divorced when Hemingway was 6 years old. Hemingway describes herself as a “dark child.” As a teenager, she ran away to find her father Gregory Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s youngest son. She discovered her father suffered from depression.
Hemingway’s early adult years were tumultuous. She used drugs and alcohol, was jailed for crimes, spent time in a drug rehab facility, and had been a victim of rape and abuse.
In the 1970’s, Hemingway met her husband and they had a child though alcoholism continued to plague her. As a resident in Florida, she became passionate about deep sea fishing and founded a fishing tournament in 1980.
Finally, in 1988, Hemingway was able to free herself from the addiction by entering a rehab facility. She discusses her time at the facility and her new found freedom from drugs and alcohol at the end of her memoir.
Her newest work of non-fiction, A World Turned Over: A Killer Tornado and the Lives It Changed Forever, depicts the deadly 1966 tornado that struck the Candlestick Shopping Center in South Jackson, Mississippi. Although Hemingway’s family had recently moved from their home that was across the street to the shopping center, the storm had a big impact on her childhood memories. In 2000, she began interviewing survivors of the storm and tells their stories in her book.
Lorian Hemingway is the director of the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition which she founded in 1981. The competition is open to unpublished authors from all over the world and draws hundreds of submissions annually.
Hemingway has written for publications such as Rolling Stone, the New York Times Magazine, The Seattle Times, and The Chicago Tribune. She was awarded the Conch Republic Prize for Literature in 1999. She currently lives in Seattle, Washington.