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 writers in the United States, 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 speak in Rockville and will read from his work. Discussing “The Art of Fiction” and the 2023 Festival’s theme, “Mental Illness in Fiction,” with Franzen will be 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.


The 2023 multi-event Festival will begin virtually on May 23 at 6 p.m. when Fitzgerald authority David Page will deliver a talk on Fitzgerald’s roots in St. Paul.

Later events will include a celebration of Fitzgerald’s birthday in late September, the presentation of the winners and runners-up in the annual Student Short Story and Adult Short Story Contests in October.

On Friday evening, October 20, a program of “Tributes to Jonathan Franzen,” will take place at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. Full information for all of these events will be posted on this website as it becomes available.