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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Legacy Lives in Honored Authors

The newest recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award is Elmore “Dutch” Leonard, the prolific author of 42 novels and countless short stories, many of them household names: 3:10 to Yuma, Get Shorty, Rum Punch, The Big Bounce, and 52 Pickup.

Leonard joins a list of impressive and diverse honorees. Given each year at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference in Rockville Maryland, the coveted award has been granted to thirteen world-renowned authors.

One such author is the late Norman Mailer. Mailer, known best for The Naked and the Dead but also for his sometimes controversial writing and views, accepted the award at the annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference in 2000.

John Updike received the honor in 2002. One of the most well-known writers living today, Updike has written 22 novels and more than a dozen collections of short fiction—from the Rabbit favorites to his most recent Terrorist.

E.L. Doctorow came to Rockville to receive his Fitzgerald in 1999. That was before his most recent bestseller, The March, but after the fame of Ragtime, hailed by critics as the best novel of the 1990s.

Acclaimed literary novelist Joyce Carol Oates, author of such novels as Them and The Gravedigger’s Daughter, came to the Fitzgerald Conference to receive accept her honor in 1998.

In 2001, long after A Kiss Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines received his Fitzgerald. And the award does not go to novelists alone. Playwright Edward Albee accepted the award in 2003.

That’s just the beginning of the impressive list of honorees. Others to receive the honor at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference in Rockville include William Styron (the first recipient), John Barth, Grace Paley, Pat Conroy, and Jane Smiley.

The most recent recipient, William J. Kennedy, accepted his Fitzgerald at the last conference, on October 13, 2007. After receiving his award, the author of Ironweed spoke of his own writing experiences, his fondness for F. Scott Fitzgerald, and even read passages from his new, still-unpublished novel.

Learn more about Dutch Leonard and his acceptance of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award by reading the recent profile in The Washington Post.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/26/AR2008052602219.html


Visit Dutch Leonard at his website.

www.elmoreleonard.com/

And be sure to make plans to see Elmore “Dutch” Leonard in person at the next F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference on October 25, 2008. Stay tuned to the conference website for details as they come.

www.montgomerycollege.edu/potomacreview/fscott/

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