For over 20 years, Pamela Lanier's Key West, Florida Travel Guide has been your connection to Key West's tourism community with invaluable details on local attractions, restaurants, shopping, museums, history, outdoor recreation and more.
Festivals, Festivals, Festivals
Key West is a city that enjoys having fun and there is a seemingly endless variety of festivals and parties. The island’s literary heritage is celebrated each January with the Key West Literary Seminar. Each year focuses on a specific genre or the work of a renowned writer, and scholars, writers, and students from around the country participate in a week of workshops, readings, seminars, and, of course, parties.
In April, the Conch Republic Independence Celebration remembers the island’s famous secession from the United States in 1982, when in response to a United States Border blockade of the Florida Keys, Key West Mayor Dennis Wardlow seceded from the Union, declared war, surrendered, and demanded foreign aid. The Conch Republic has as its stated Foreign Policy, "The Mitigation of World Tension through the Exercise of Humor". Events include tattoo contests, a drag race and The Great Tequila Taste Off.
The Memory of Key West’s most famous resident, Ernest Hemingway, is rekindled each July during the Hemingway Days festival. Best-known for its fishing tournament and Hemingway look-alike contest, the festival has academic and literary aspects as well, most notably the Festival’s International Short Story Contest and The Conch Republic Literary Award, which has been presented to such American Writers as James Dickey and John Updike. In September, the island’s very active year-round theater community is in the spotlight of the Key West Theater Festival, which features two weeks of theatrical presentations at the city’s five active theaters.
But it is in October that the city shines with sequins, lights, makeup, costumes, and music. Fantasy Fest, Key West’s answer to Mardi Gras, brings costumed revelers from around the globe to compete in international costume contests. The ten-day event is packed with contests, concerts, parties, street fairs, and parades. The traditional Twilight Fantasy Parade through the Old Town district easily draws over 70,000 people to Duval Street. Bands and floats, both from Key West neighborhoods and businesses and from around the United States and the Caribbean, range from the absurd to the spectacular.
