Begun in 1924 on Cap d'Antibe, the first Lions and Typers Festival (known then only as the Lions Festival) began at the beach house of Gerald and Sara Murphy. The first attendees were Pablo Picasso and his aging mother, Gertrude Stein, Bunny Williams, Cole Porter and - of course - Hemingway and Fitzgerald. The French festival included sandcastle building, boxing and cliff diving.

The event was re-named in 1927 for the pet lion Mme. Maurice Abernathy who was a fixture on the Cote D'Azur at that time.

The festival eventually found its way to rural Connecticut during the Great Depression where a scaled back version was held at the estate of Harpo Marx and his wife Susan Fleming, The modified events were limited to Charades, Marco Polo, and treasure hunts conducted by Mable Teller, the Marx family's housekeeper. The guest list however, was no less iconic, including George S. Kaufman, Dorothy Parker and Franchot Tone, as well as Moss and Kitty Carlisle Hart.

As America became involved in World War II, the Connecticut Lions and Typers - as well as other secret festivals of all kinds - fell out of fashion and lay fallow until 1956 when George Plimpton, Marlon Brando and Norman Mailer held clandestine meetings in the Brooklyn apartment of Preacher Roe. This is where the actual "writing" component of the festival came into being.

In addition to composing and reading poems, participants were required to "borrow" a horse for the closing ceremonies held at the Botanical Gardens where an impromptu polo match usually went on into the wee hours, or until Bennett Cerf blew the ceremonial bugle and sent everyone home. According to an unpublished excerpt from his diaries, the 1959 meeting inspired Andy Warhol to finally quit advertising.

Since the late 1960s a secret sect of English lords have held a primitive, alcohol-induced version of the modern day "X Games" becoming the "first" to ski downhill on a Louis XV dining suite and the "first", not surprisingly, to cross the EnglishChannel in the pouch of an inflateable kangaroo. Sadly, no writing has ever been produced by the English faction as Kingsley Amis, the most notable member, was rendered unconscious during the one weekend he managed to attend.

The festival made its Midwestern debut and acquired it's current name at the University of Iowa during the 1970s. As documented in Raymond Carver's poem "You Don't Know What Love Is", Charles Bukowski tells a gathering of students and writers he shouldn't be allowed to throw himself - or anybody else - out a window and that he saw "no poets, just a lot of typers" in the crowd.

In late 2006, the organization's new leaders, a group of de-frocked Opus Dei clerics who now channel their fanaticism towards clandestine festival planning, sanctioned a Chicago branch of Lions and Typers with the responsibility of bringing together a sublime combination of talent, mysterious ritual, contests of skill and alcohol. Sadly, no horses will be involved.

And yes it is the Uptown Writers who must now find the spirit to carry on this rich tradition and make it our own.