Hilary Hemingway
Writer, painter and filmmaker, half of Cape literary duo
Hilary Hemingway and Jeff Lindsay are two famed Cape Coral residents you may not recognize on the street. But their work speaks to us, Jeff as author of the bestselling/television series Dexter novels, Hilary as an award-winning writer/screenwriter, documentarian, journalist and a painter of note. She is also the niece of Ernest Hemingway. Cape Coral Living asked Hilary Hemingway for a CliffsNotes guide to her story.
I WAS BORN
in Miami and then spent my first two years living aboard a boat with my family. I took my first steps on dry land in Jamaica. Eventually my parents bought a home on Miami Beach.
WHEN I STARTED
college my dream was to become a female version of Jacques Cousteau, but college chemistry was more than I could handle. That said, I excelled in photography and documentary filmmaking (University of Miami). My senior project was a documentary about two Holocaust survivors of Auschwitz. I got Leonard Nimoy to narrate it.
I MOVED TO
LA after winning the National FOCUS award for a screenplay I wrote about my dad [Leicester] and his relationship with his brother, Ernest. I remember Jeff saying—this is important— “You won, without anyone knowing your name. You won on your own ability.” I thought, that’s weird; I mean, if you come from a
family of doctors and you decide to become a doctor, no one says, “Geez, you’re just riding on your old man’s reputation.” But if you are a writer, everyone is going to look at your work and, yes, make comparisons. When I started writing, I used legal pads, and a friend said, “Are you copying Papa?” I’m like, no, I just don’t type well, or fast. Also dyslexic. So I tend to use short, easy words. Again, folks thought I was copying my Uncle Ernest, who, as it turns out, also spelled poorly. Dyslexics tend to see words as pictures, so instead of sounding a word out, we try to memorize what it looks like. Hence the smaller the word, the more likely you are to get it right.
DURING THE
seven years I lived in Los Angeles, I fell in love with my writing partner, who I am happy to say has been my husband for the past 30 years. Probably the high point of our Hollywood screenwriting career was a pitch meeting with Steven Spielberg. It went very well, but when we were done, he said, “I really like your story, but I have already done a story about an alien who wants to go home. This isn’t what I’m looking for.” But he later did Men in Black.
I HAVE
five published books, two plays produced. I worked for Fox News, then repented and worked for WGCU-PBS. The first show I did with them was Media Watch. Then I brought in my friend Sue Lesko. She had produced the Holocaust documentary and was kind enough to give a grant to WGCU. This allowed us to shoot an hour-long documentary that was supposed to be the first in a series, Literary Explorer’s Hemingway’s Cuba. While I directed/produced it, Jeff was the host. And while it was later picked up and distributed [Public Broadcasting Service] and won a Telly Award for Excellence, I was pregnant with our third child, and Jeff suddenly had his Dexter series take off. But things have an odd way of working out. I sent the documentary to our LA screenwriting agent, and he in turn introduced me to [actor and director] Andy Garcia, who had been wanting to write the story of friendship between Ernest and his Cuban captain, Gregorio Fuentes. I met with Fuentes several times while in Cuba, and I had the honor of presenting him with the IGFA [International Game Fish Association] Captains Award. The screenplay Hemingway and Fuentes has been close to getting made several times, then things happen that are totally out of my control—like actors drop out, or financing comes and goes. But if it’s meant to happen, it will.
“I mean, if you come from a family of doctors and you decide to become a doctor, no one says, ‘Geez, you’re just riding on your old man’s reputation.’ ”
I KEEP BUSY
with my artwork. I love using the colorful palette of the Caribbean, and I try to have my art tell a story―the struggle of life and death between a marlin and tuna while using bright colors as if their struggle were seen through mermaid eyes.
MY ARTWORK
has been sold in galleries and at auction to support charities like ACT [Abuse Counseling & Treatment], The Heights Foundation, Avow Hospice, and Golisano Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida.