PEN Hemingway Prize Keynote Address Delivered at the John F. Kennedy Library 29 March 2009

Each year the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and PEN New England award the PEN Hemingway prize for the year's best first work of fiction. The ceremony takes place at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, home of the Hemingway Collection, and a distinguished author delivers a keynote address. Here we present the keynote address of Richard Rhodes, who spoke at the ceremony honoring 2009 PEN Hemingway award winner Michael Dahlie and his novel, A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living. The author of more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, Rhodes is best-known for his 1986 history, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won both a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.