During the 1930s, when Key West was hit so hard by the Great Depression that it was forced to declare bankruptcy, Ernest Hemingway’s love affair with the island led to the creation of one of his best-known novels.

Toured by scores of visitors daily, the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum is the focus of Key West's literary heritage. (Photo by Andy Newman, Florida Keys News Bureau)

Fascinated by Key West’s rowdy atmosphere and spectacular fishing (like so many of us!), Hemingway was the first popular author to make it his home. During the Depression, he described the town, and used some of its residents as inspiration for unforgettable characters, in “To Have and Have Not.”

It was the only novel Ernest ever set in the United States — which illustrates just how much the island, his home throughout the 1930s, meant to him.

So it’s fitting that the 2012 Hemingway Days celebration honors more than Ernest’s literary talent and exuberant Key West lifestyle. Set for July 17-22, it also honors the 75th anniversary of the publication of “To Have and Have Not.”

FYI, the Hemingway era was just the beginning of Key West’s popularity with world-class writers. In the 1930’s, John Dos Passos, Hart Crane, S.J. Perelman, Archibald MacLeish, and Wallace Stevens began visiting the island. Tennessee Williams lived on a quiet side street from the late 1940’s until his death. And poet Robert Frost was a regular guest of Key West grande dame Jessie Porter Newton.

In fact, for 75 years or so, Key West has been a haven for some of America’s leading writers. The tiny island has been home to Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, Alison Lurie, Robert Stone, Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison, Philip Burton, Judy Blume, Nancy Friday, Shel Silverstein, Ann Beattie, Jimmy Buffett, Philip Caputo and Mark Childress among many, many others — an astonishing listing for such an out-of-the-way spot.

Author Lorian Hemingway (right) is joined at a Key West book signing by her daughter Cristen, also a writer and editor. (Photo courtesy of Katharine Roach)

Lorian Hemingway, author of the critically acclaimed “Walk on Water,” “Walking into the River” and “A World Turned Over,” has been coming to Key West since the late 1960s.

She’s also Ernest Hemingway’s granddaughter, but her passion for the island city stems from far more than family ties.

“What I like best about Key West is being able to watch the full moon set over the water and the sun begin to rise at the same time … the way the constellations look in that saltwater bath of night air, precise and diffuse at once … the fishing, definitely the fishing, off any bridge, any time of day or night,” she says. “And the people, who know what all this means.”

In fact, Hemingway Days’ literary highlight each year is the announcement of the winners of the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. This year, that takes place at 8 p.m. Friday, July 20, at a reception at Casa Antigua in Key West’s historic Old Town.

The short story competition was created in 1981 to recognize the efforts of talented emerging writers, and Lorian has directed it ever since. It draws more than 1,000 entries each year from aspiring fiction writers from the U.S. and many other countries.

Lorian Hemingway and Casa Antigua owner Mary Ann Worth share a quiet moment in the historic property's atrium garden. (Photo by Tom Oosterhoudt, Conch Color)

The awards ceremony includes a reading of the winning story and a presentation on Casa Antigua by Tom Oosterhoudt, who owns it with his mother Mary Ann Worth — plus guided tours of the architecturally unique property.

Casa Antigua is the ideal site for the event, since it was Ernest Hemingway’s first residence in Key West. There, serendipitously delayed on his way from Cuba to the mainland, he wrote, relaxed and began his decade-long love affair with the island.

The property itself is as fascinating as its history. Its most notable feature is a soaring atrium garden, open to the sky, and the truly unique living spaces built around the garden on three levels.

So whether you “have” or “have not,” try to be in Key West for the awards ceremony. Discover the island’s literary spirit at Casa Antigua, marvel at the landmark property during a guided tour — and, if you’re very lucky, perceive the presence of Ernest himself.