Bill Hillmann (born 1982) is an American author, storyteller, and journalist. He is a bull-runner and former boxer.
Bill Hillmann (born 1982) is an American author, storyteller, and journalist. He is a bull-runner and former boxer.
Hillmann was born in Chicago in 1982, [1] and grew up on the city's North Side. He attended St. Joseph High School. [2] He has a bachelor's degree from Elmhurst College and an MFA from Columbia College Chicago. [3]
As an author, Hillmann is the author of the novel The Old Neighborhood (2014), [4] [5] [6] [7] and the nonfiction book Mozos: A Decade Running with the Bulls (2015) [8] [9] which was translated and published in Spain as Corriendo con Hemingway (2016). [1] [10]
As a journalist, Hillmann has written for NPR as well as for publications including the Toronto Star , Playboy , Chicago Tribune , Salon , Daily Mail , Los Angeles Times , Stuff, and The Washington Post . [11] [12] [13] [3] [14]
As a storyteller, Hillmann is the creator of the Windy City Story Slam. [15] [16] He also created the National Story Slam, in which ten storytellers representing different storytelling series across the country performed at the main stage of the Chicago Tribune Printer's Row Lit Fest. [17] [18] [19] He has told stories at storytelling series in Philadelphia, [20] Portland, [21] San Francisco, [22] and Boston, [23] and won the Boulder Story Slam in Boulder, Colorado in 2014. [24] He has produced and performed in Story Slam events in London and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, [25] [26] has participated in Book Slam, London's literary nightclub, [27] and has told stories on NPR's The Story and Snap Judgment . [28] [29]
Hillmann is a 2002 Chicago Golden Gloves boxing champion representing the Windy City Gym and a two time selection for the Chicago Golden Gloves International Traveling Team. [3] [7] [30] As a boxing journalist, Hillmann was the Chicago correspondent for Fightnews, and is the special boxing contributor for the Chicago Tribune RedEye. [31] [32]
Hillmann is an experienced participant in running of the bulls, and has been described as "the best young bull runner from the United States". [33] He has given expert commentary on the running of the bulls for CNN, [34] The Today Show , [35] CBS This Morning , [36] BBC World Service, [37] and Esquire Network. [38] His audio essay "Running with the Bulls in Pamplona" for WBEZ Chicago Public Radio won an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association in 2010. [39]
He was inspired to join the tradition by Ernest Hemingway's book The Sun Also Rises , [40] [41] and has taken part in the bull runs in Pamplona since 2005. [41] [42] [43] In 2011 and 2012 he wrote how-to guides on the running of the bulls for Outside magazine. [43] [44] By 2013 he had acquired the nickname "Buffalo Bill Hillmann", and in 2014 he co-authored the book Fiesta: How to Survive the Bulls of Pamplona with Alexander Fiske-Harrison and John Hemingway. [45] [46]
On July 9, 2014, a bull named Bravito [47] (Spanish for Brave one), gored Hillmann twice in the thigh at the festival of San Fermín in Pamplona, [45] [46] [48] but he returned to bull-running in Pamplona in 2015, [41] and published his memoir, Mozos: A Decade Running with the Bulls. [8] In the summer of 2016 he ran with the bulls more than 200 times in towns throughout Spain. [49] [50] He has stated that his favorite running of the bulls is the oldest, in Cuéllar, a small town about two hours north of Madrid, where hundreds of horsemen guide the bulls 3 miles (5 km) to the town and into the run. [41] [42] [51]
On July 8, 2017, he was gored by one of the bulls from José Escolar in Pamplona. [52]
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.
The festival of San Fermín is a weeklong, historically rooted celebration held annually in the city of Pamplona, Navarre, in northern Spain. The celebrations start at noon on July 6 and continue until midnight on July 14. A firework starts off the celebrations and the popular song Pobre de mí is sung at the end. The most famous event is the running of the bulls, which begins at 8 in the morning from July 7 to 14, but the festival involves many other traditional and folkloric events. It is known locally as Sanfermines and is held in honour of Saint Fermin, the co-patron of Navarre.
A running of the bulls is an event that involves running in front of a small group of bulls, typically six but sometimes ten or more, that have been let loose on sectioned-off streets in a town, usually as part of a summertime festival. Particular breeds of cattle may be favored, such as the toro bravo in Spain, also often used in post-run bullfighting, and Camargue cattle in Occitan France, which are not fought. Bulls are typically used in such events.
The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, his first, that portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. However, Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work", and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by Scribner's. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print.
The Dangerous Summer is a nonfiction book by Ernest Hemingway published posthumously in 1985 and written in 1959 and 1960. The book describes the rivalry between bullfighters Luis Miguel Dominguín and his brother-in-law, Antonio Ordóñez, during the "dangerous summer" of 1959. It has been cited as Hemingway's last book.
Walter Stacy Keach Jr. is an American actor and narrator. He has played mainly dramatic roles throughout his career, often in law enforcement or as a private detective. His most prominent role was as Mickey Spillane's fictional detective Mike Hammer, which he played in numerous stand-alone television films and at least three television series throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The role earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination in 1984.
United Center is an indoor arena on the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is home to the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League (NHL). It is named after its corporate sponsor United Airlines, which has been based in Chicago since 2007. With a capacity of nearly 21,000, the United Center is the largest arena by capacity in the NBA, and second largest arena by capacity in the NHL.
Juan Belmonte García was a Spanish bullfighter. He fought in a record number of bull fights and was responsible for changing the art of bullfighting. He had minor deformities in his legs which forced him to design new techniques and styles of bullfighting.
Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure is a 1999 BBC television documentary presented by Michael Palin. It records Palin's travels as he visited many sites where Ernest Hemingway had been. The sites include Spain, Chicago, Paris, Italy, Africa, Key West, Cuba, and Idaho.
Elizabeth Hadley Richardson was the first wife of American author Ernest Hemingway. The two married in 1921 after a courtship of less than a year, and moved to Paris within months of being married. In Paris, Hemingway pursued a writing career, and through him Hadley met other expatriate American and British writers.
Lesley M. M. Blume is a journalist and New York Times bestselling author. The daughter of a classical pianist and a journalist, she followed her father's footsteps into the newsroom, beginning her career at The Jordan Times in Amman and Cronkite Productions in New York City. She later became an off-air reporter and researcher for ABC News Nightline with Ted Koppel in Washington, D.C., where she helped cover the historic presidential election in 2000, the 9/11 attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a myriad of other events and topics.
Robert K. Elder is Chief Digital Officer at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an American journalist, author, and film columnist. He has written more than a dozen books on topics ranging from the death penalty and movies to Ernest Hemingway and Elvis Presley.
The Sun Also Rises is a 1957 film adaptation of the 1926 Ernest Hemingway novel of the same name directed by Henry King. The screenplay was written by Peter Viertel and it starred Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, Mel Ferrer, and Errol Flynn. Much of it was filmed on location in France and Spain as well as Mexico in Cinemascope and color by Deluxe. A highlight of the film is the famous "running of the bulls" in Pamplona, Spain and two bullfights.
John Patrick Hemingway is a Canadian-American author, whose memoir Strange Tribe: A Family Memoir examines the similarities and the complex relationship between his mother Gloria Hemingway and his grandfather, the Nobel Laureate Ernest Hemingway; in particular it addresses the issue of his father's cross-dressing and sex reassignment and its connection to Ernest Hemingway.
Alexander Rupert Fiske-Harrison is an English author, producer, financier and conservationist.
Bullfighting is a physical contest that involves a bullfighter and animals attempting to subdue, immobilize, or kill a bull, usually according to a set of rules, guidelines, or cultural expectations.
A bull is an intact adult male of the species Bos taurus. More muscular and aggressive than the females of the same species, the cows, bulls have long been an important symbol in many cultures, and play a significant role in beef ranching, dairy farming, and a variety of other cultural activities, including bullfighting and bull riding.
Hotel La Perla is a five-star hotel in Pamplona, Spain and is located in the Plaza del Castillo, with one side facing Estafeta Street, one of the main routes in the Running of the Bulls. The balconies of the hotel are among the most coveted sites from which to view the event.
The Sun Also Rises or Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises is a 2013 ballet adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises that was premiered by The Washington Ballet at The Kennedy Center under Artistic Director Septime Webre, whose parents had known Hemingway. It is the first version of this work en pointe. It premiered from May 8 – 12, 2013. Webre had previously adapted The Great Gatsby and Alice in Wonderland to ballet. According to Emily Cary of The Washington Examiner, like the source, the plot is about "a group of American and British expatriates who meet in Paris and travel to Pamplona, Spain, to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights." Clark notes that the production was inspired by one of Webre's friends who taught American literature at Yale University who suggested an adaptation.
Chasing Red is a 2015 documentary film about the 2012 Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain. The film directed by Dennis Clancey.
Bill Hillmann is considered the best young bull runner from the United States