MidAmerica Award

MICHAEL KIM ROOS

Hemingway scholar Michael Kim Roos’s distinguished contributions to the study of Midwestern literature are multi-faceted. Mike is the author of One Small Town, One Crazy Coach: The Ireland Spuds and the 1963 Indiana High School Basketball Season (2013) and the co-author of Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: A Glossary and Commentary (2019), as well as many scholarly essays and articles on Hemingway and Minnesota Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan that were published in The Hemingway Review, MidAmerica, Midwestern Miscellany, The Journal of Popular Culture, Teaching Hemingway in the Natural World, and other academic journals and books. He has also presented on Hemingway at four conferences of The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature and at Hemingway Society conferences in Oak Park, Petoskey, San Francisco, Lausanne, Venice, and Paris.

Mike has also made distinguished contributions to Midwestern literature through his teaching. At the University of Cincinnati’s Blue Ash College, Mike taught courses ranging from “Bob Dylan and the Beatles” to “Ernest Hemingway in the 1920s” and “Hemingway and Fitzgerald in the 1920s”; most recently, he has led a seminar on A Farewell to Arms.

As a singer-songwriter, Mike has provided audiences with new perspectives on Hemingway’s work with his Hemingway-themed songs that he has performed at two annual conferences of The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, as well as other venues, including the Eiffel Tower at the Hemingway Society conference in Paris.

Mike Roos was educated at the University of Evansville (BA) and Miami University of Ohio (MA).

He will be the fifty-third recipient of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature’s MidAmerica Award, which has been given annually since 1977. Past recipients include John T. Flanagan, James Seaton, Donald Pizer, James R. Shortridge and our 2024 winner, Ann E. Ransford.