Curtis L. DeBerg

Curtis L. DeBerg is a retired university business professor, Hemingway traveler, and author. A native of Rock Rapids, Iowa, he spent thirty years teaching at California State University before moving to Miami, Florida. He now shares time between Miami and Hendaye, France — the Basque coast town where Hemingway returned seven times. His fascination with Hemingway began during a 2005 visit to Key West and deepened after surviving a serious plane crash in 2016. In 2021, while researching at the Mayo Clinic, DeBerg discovered that a Franciscan sister had preserved a copy of The Old Man and the Sea bearing what are believed to be among the last words Hemingway ever wrote — a personal inscription to the nun who cared for him in his final months. DeBerg suggested the sisters donate the book to the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm, carried it there himself, and spoke at the ceremony. The story was reported in a feature article in the Arts section of the New York Times on January 23, 2026. His new collection, Ode to Hemingway: Three Stories and Ten Poems, is modeled after Hemingway's 1923 debut and written from the Hemingway Corner — a cozy room at the back of a coffee shop in Hendaye, surrounded by three hundred Hemingway books. His screenplay "The Hemingway Code" is currently under review at the Austin Film Festival and The Black List. When in France, he lives above the coffee shop with his French copine. He is still swimming. The demons are quieter now.