For the first time since the Hemingway Foundation Scholarship was formed, applications were opened to students outside of Oak Park and River Forest.
According to the Foundation’s website, the scholarship essay contest is open to all juniors at OPRF High School, D201 Berwyn-Cicero, D209 Riverside-Brookfield, D209 Proviso Township and D401 Elmwood Park.
“There are a lot of resources already for students in Oak Park River Forest,” said Keith Strom, executive director of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. “Not so much in some of those collars. It was always my intention at some point to have a scholarship that would expand to some of those areas, and it just worked out, our board agreed that we should just expand it.”
Strom said students can apply the scholarship to whatever the “next step of higher learning” is, including trade school.
Sinai Arreola from Proviso Math and Science Academy was the recipient of the 2024 Hemingway Foundation Scholarship for excellence in writing for the prompt “What is your escape.”
“Hers [Arreola] was just above and beyond the others we received for sure,” Strom said.
Arreola did not respond to requests for comment.
The Foundation was founded in 1983 to increase Hemingway’s legacy in the village.
“A lot of the scholars neglected his first 20 years; they go straight to when he was in Paris,” Strom said. “The people of Oak Park said, ‘hey what about the first 20 years?’”
The foundation also created a scholarship program for students, which was reintroduced in 2016 for junior level students with “the intent of discovering and fostering writing talent.”
Strom started in 2017 and said he “expanded the mission” to support artists of today in various realms including music, performance and writing.
For the writing scholarship, Strom said students submit an essay, usually between 500 to 600 words and must have a minimum 2.5 GPA.
The recipient receives a $1,500 college scholarship at graduation, and they also receive a one-year mentorship with the foundation’s writer in residence for their senior year.
Strom said this year’s writer will be determined in July.
Past writers in residence have included Scott Nations, a best-selling author and decade-long contributor to CNBC, Rebecca Morgan Frank, author of four poetry collections including “Oh You Robot Saints!” and “Sometimes We’re All Living in a Foreign Country.”
This year also marks the first year the foundation is offering $1,500 for each scholarship, raising its awards by $500 because the cost of college tuition continues to rise.
“It is my hope that in the next few years we will get the scholarship program to the point where it is endowed and we will actually raise the level on that as well,” Strom said.
Along with financial support, Strom said that the foundation also continues to work with schoolteachers, hoping to be a resource for them to be able to reach more students and also help promote the scholarship.
The Foundation also offers the Allan O. Baldwin Memorial Student Scholarship, which is open to seniors at OPRF, D201 Berwyn-Cicero, D209 Riverside-Brookfield, D209 Proviso Township and D401 Elmwood Park.
The student is awarded a $1,500 college scholarship.
To be eligible, students must have a minimum of a 2.5 GPA.
The 2024 Allan O. Baldwin Memorial Student Scholarship was awarded to Alexa Vateva of Elmwood Park High School.
Both scholarship recipients will also have their winning submissions published in the Foundation’s annual Hemingway Shorts literary journal publication, which was first published in 2016.
“The student essays are in there as well,” Strom said. “Normally it works out to be their first published work.”