Jon Auvil, center, receives an Ernest Hemingway bust and congratulations after winning the 2022 Hemingway Stunt Contest at Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West, Florida. To Auvil’s left is Joe Maxey, the 2019 winner, and to his right is Fred Johnson, who won in 1986. It was Auvil’s eighth attempt at the annual contest.
Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau via AP
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Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau via AP
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Jon Auvil, center, receives an Ernest Hemingway bust and congratulations after winning the 2022 Hemingway Stunt Contest at Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West, Florida. To Auvil’s left is Joe Maxey, the 2019 winner, and to his right is Fred Johnson, who won in 1986. It was Auvil’s eighth attempt at the annual contest.
Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau via AP
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Some arrived in wool fisherman’s sweaters and other competitors in sportswear. But it was attorney Jon Auvil’s cream sweater that caught the attention of the judges, who awarded him the most similar title for author and former Key West resident Ernest Hemingway.
Auvil triumphed Saturday night over 124 other contenders for the title in the annual Hemingway Look-Alike contest at Sloppy Joe’s Bar, the Key West establishment where the author was a regular during his decade-long residence on the island in the 1930s.
The stuntman contest is a highlight of Key West’s annual Hemingway Days celebration, which ends Sunday.
Auvil said he shares Hemingway’s passion for fishing, has written some fiction, and would like to write more.
“Every man wants to write like Hemingway,” said Auvil, who lives in Dade City, Florida, northeast of Tampa.
While living in Key West, Hemingway wrote such classics as “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “To Have and Have Not.”
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