The 27th annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival will honor author Jonathan Franzen with the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature.
Since 1996, the award has been presented to some of America’s most distinguished writers, including Richard Russo, Annie Proulx, Norman Mailer, Pat Conroy, John Updike, Amy Tan, Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Powers.
The festival will take place on Saturday, Oct. 21. The location is still to be determined. This year’s theme is “Mental Illness in Fiction.”
The festival will host other events throughout the month, such as a celebration of Fitzgerald’s birthday at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 3, with a performance by the Rose Theatre Company of “Devotedly, With Dearest Love: A Dramatic Reading Drawn from The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald,” by Lorrie Kyle, at The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda.
Top prize winners from the festival’s adult and student short story contests will read from their entries from 6-7:45 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12 in the first-floor reading room of Rockville Memorial Library, 21 Maryland Ave.
A free festival event, “Readings in Honor of Jonathan Franzen,” co-sponsored with the Writer’s Center, will be held 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 20 at The Writer’s Center.
The F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival was established in 1996 to celebrate the centenary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birth and the city where Fitzgerald, his wife and daughter are buried — the festival is co-sponsored by the City of Rockville and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference, Inc.
The festival is open to everyone, especially writers, book lovers and Fitzgerald fans. For more information and to register visit www.fscottfestival.org.