Dedication of the Key West Literary Pantheon February 28, 2020 at 4:00 to 6:00pm
533 Eaton St., Key West

Books & Books @ The Studios invites the public to a dedication ceremony for its new Key West Literary Pantheon celebrating forty-four distinguished and nationally recognized authors, all of whom have lived and/or worked in our island paradise. Their names are permanently posted in a frieze wrapping around the interior of the store, and honored in a descriptive guide.

This amazing list contains most famously Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams, but it is a diverse group including Elizabeth Bishop, Ralph Ellison, Robert Stone, Shel Silverstein and James Merrill. There are eleven Pulitzer Prize winners (some multiple times), six National Book Award winners (some multiple times), and three winners of the prestigious Bollingen Poetry Prize.  These literary artists have drawn sustenance from the Key West muse, which in some subtle way drew out creativity in a manner that an intellectual hot-bed like New York could not.

As James Leo Herlihy author of Midnight Cowboy put it, “The place was mysterious, funky, indescribably exotic. It had much of the charm of a foreign country, but you had the post office and the A&P and the phone worked, so life was easy.” John Dewey, perhaps the leading philosopher of the last century, confirmed “the mañana mood develops very easily here,” but it made words flow. William Gaddis heard it was a lazy retreat popular with artists and writers. He found the perfect shady porch to set up his rickety Olympia typewriter, completing the novel J R, a winner of the National Book Award for Fiction. Perhaps David Kaufelt said it best: ”We wear shorts, we ride bicycles, we have the water, a great symbol of the unconscious, and we’re free to be children here and let our spirits go.”

Although our Pantheon is limited to deceased writers, there is no doubt that the Key West magic continues to this day. Among our current residents are many of equal stature: Pulitzer Prize winners including Annie Dillard and Alison Lurie, National Book Award nominee Phyllis Rose, many members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters — including Anne Beattie, Joy Williams and Edmund White, the inestimable Laurent de Brunhoff, and Library of Congress Living Legend Judy Blume.

Please join us at the bookstore in Key West to raise a glass to this distinguished company and share the moment with the spouses of several honorees. George Cooper, and Arlo Haskell of the Key West Literary Seminar will offer remarks.

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