Jonathan Franzen, author of four of the most acclaimed novels of recent decades - The Corrections (2001), Freedom (2010), Purity (2015), and Crossroads (2021) - and one of the most visible and intensely debated contemporary writers, will receive the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature at the 27th annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival on October 21, 2023. He will read from his work and discuss “The Art of Fiction” and the 2023 Festival’s theme, “Mental Illness in Fiction,” with award-winning fiction writer David Means.

Also on October 21, Ron Charles, of the Washington Post's "Book World," host of "The Book Report" on CBS-TV's Sunday Morning, and also host of "The Totally Hip Video Book Review," will give the Festival’s keynote talk, “A Life in Books”; leading local writers, including Ethelbert Miller, Margaret Talbot, Louis Bayard, and Tope Folarin, will lead Fiction and Non-Fiction Workshops; and local historian Eileen McGuckian will lead a tour of “Fitzgerald’s Haunts in Rockville."

Other 2023 Festival events will include a celebration of Fitzgerald’s birthday on October 3, a reading of a new play based on the letters exchanged between F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald; the presentation of the winners and runners-up in the annual Student Short Story and Adult Short Story Contests on October 12; and on Friday evening, October 20, a program of “Tributes to Jonathan Franzen,”featuring DAvid Means, Louis Bayard, and Marcela Valdes, with a response by Johnathon Franzen at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. Full information for all of these events are available on this website.