Judson Jerome Biography

Judson Jerome (1927 - August 5, 1991 in Xenia, Ohio) was an American poet, author, and literary critic, perhaps best known for having written the poetry column for Writer's Digest for thirty years.

Jerome was also responsible for a controversial amendment to Ernest Hemingway's 1933 short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place ; in 1956, Jerome -- then an assistant professor of English at Antioch College -- wrote to Hemingway to inquire about a section of dialogue which he saw as problematic. Hemingway responded to Jerome with the thirteen words "I read the story again and it still makes perfect sense to me"; however, when A Clean, Well-Lighted Place was republished posthumously in Scribner's Magazine in 1965, the passage in question had been changed to address Jerome's concerns. The Jerome-inspired changes, and whether Scribner's was correct in making them, remain a subject of debate among Hemingway scholars.