Celebrating the power of words and the creative spirit. . .
. . .in a landscape that Hemingway loved.
The annual Hemingway Distinguished Lecture is presented each July, honoring the month of Ernest Hemingway’s birth and death.
2025 Distinguished Lecture: HAMPTON SIDES
July 8, 2025
This year, The Community Library welcomes Hampton Sides, known for his gripping non-fiction adventure stories set in war or depicting epic expeditions of discovery and exploration.
Sides is the author of the bestselling histories Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound On His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice, and On Desperate Ground, a chronicle of the extraordinary feats of heroism by Marines called on to do the impossible during the greatest battle of the Korean War. His latest history, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, was published in 2024 and was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New York Times.
He is also editor-at-large for Outside and a frequent contributor to National Geographic and other magazines. His journalistic work, collected in numerous published anthologies, has been twice nominated for National Magazine Awards for feature writing. A native of Memphis and a Yale graduate, Hampton is the 2015 Miller Distinguished Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute and an advisory board member of the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference and the Author’s Guild. He is also a partner of Atalaya Productions, an independent film company that develops non-fiction and historical stories for the screen. A frequent lecturer, Hampton divides his time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Colorado College, where he teaches narrative non-fiction and serves as Journalist in Residence.
The lecture will be presented outdoors on the Library’s Donaldson Robb Family Lawn. The program will also be livestreamed, and a recording will be available for two weeks upon request.
Registration to attend in-person opens on Monday, April 21. Click here to learn more.
