Hotch at 100: Growing Up In St. Louis

This year marks the 100th birthday of author and Washington University alumnus A. E. Hotchner.  To help celebrate this milestone, Hotchner sat down with Washington University’s Steven Rosenblum in May 2017 for a wide-ranging conversation on his life, his career as a writer, and his friendships with Ernest Hemingway, Paul Newman, and others. In this first installment, “Hotch” recalls his memories of childhood in Saint Louis, his experiences of the Great Depression, and how they informed his memoir King of the Hill (which was later adapted into a film by Steven Soderbergh).

The Modern Literature Collection has been acquiring Hotchner’s manuscripts and other papers since 1967. The A. E. Hotchner Papers currently consist of manuscript and editorial material toward the books Papa Hemingway (1966), Treasure (1970), King of the Hill (1970), The Man Who Lived at the Ritz (1981), Looking for Miracles (1975), Choice People (1984), Louisiana Purchase (1996) and Hemingway in Love (2015), as well as scripts for Hotchner’s adaptations of Hemingway materials for television and original plays for television and the stage. View the Finding Aid here.

A major new acquisition from Hotchner this year includes further manuscripts and screenplays, correspondence with Hemingway, photographs and other memorabilia of Hotchner’s time at Washington University, dozens of photographs of Hemingway, and many materials related to Hotchner’s long-running charity production of the Hemingway story-cycle “The World of Nick Adams”. These acquisitions are still being processed. The following are sample images, included in the above video, from the A. E. Hotchner Papers:

Stay tuned for more “Hotch at 100” videos and posts in the coming months!