Having intensely honed a unique writing style in Paris in the early 1920s, Ernest Hemingway was on the verge of a breakthrough by the middle of the decade. In June of 1926 – not yet 27 years old – Hemingway drafted a letter to Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons, instructing him to expunge the first 16 pages of a work in progress. “I think it will move much faster that way,” wrote Hemingway. “Scott agrees with me.” The book in question was his second novel, The Sun Also Rises. “Scott” was his friend, confidant and literary rival, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who had introduced Hemingway to Perkins.

The emergence of Hemingway’s literary voice and the critical success of The Sun Also Rises is just one act of the author’s life explored in AMERICAN MASTERS Ernest Hemingway: Rivers to the Sea, premiering Sunday, July 26 at 9 at noon for THIRTEEN’s SundayArts. The film is written and directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker DeWitt Sage, who also won a Peabody Award for AMERICAN MASTERS’ 2001 literary biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald.