Hemingway Festival To Be Tasteful Affair Key West, Fla.

Ernest Hemingway’s birthday celebration will be a family-oriented, tasteful affair on Sanibel Island this year, rather than the rowdier festival held in Key West for the past 16 years, the author’s family said Friday.

“What was happening was unauthorized,” family representative Marla Metzner said Friday. “We only want authorized things going on.”

Organizers recently canceled the Hemingway Days Festival in Key West after the author’s sons asked for 10 percent of the festival’s income in royalties, and for greater control over the event’s tone.

Key West’s festivities, which included a lookalike contest, fishing tournament, and lots of partying, was tacky and tasteless, the family said.