Montgomery, AL, May 19, 2023 - The Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum awards the Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence annually to an author whose work continues the legacy of American storytelling while also exemplifying the craft, wit, and social insight typified by F. Scott Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a novelist, short story writer, essayist, screenwriter, playwright, lyricist, poet, and veteran, and the Fitzgerald Prize recognizes an author’s contribution in one or more of these areas. This year, the eighth annual recipient will be American author and journalist, Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is an award-winning author and journalist. He is the author of the bestselling books The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer, and Between The World And Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. His first novel, The Water Dancer, was released in September 2019. He was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship that same year. Ta-Nehisi also enjoyed a successful run writing Marvel’s Black Panther (2016-2021) and Captain America (2018-2021) comics series.
The Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum are pleased to award Ta-Nehisi Coates the 2023 Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence for his work in promoting social and racial understanding as an essayist and novelist, while also fostering American storytelling as an educator and writer across multiple disciplines and genres including screenwriter and graphic novelist.
Museum Executive Director, Dr. Alaina Doten says of Coates, "We are pleased to award an author whose works span as widely as Fitzgerald's did; Essayist, Novelist, and Screenwriter. The goal of the prize is to award authors who will help inspire the next generation of American writers, and we believe that Coates has and will continue to inspire young writers to express themselves across a wide spectrum of genres and topics as well."
Mr. Coates’ appreciation of F. Scott’s work, The Great Gatsby is well known. In Mr. Coates’ article “I Study White People,” published in The Atlantic in 2010, Mr. Coates writes, “The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald--My Lord, I read this book in a day during my sophomore year of college. I still think it is the quintessential American novel, and personally, the greatest novel I've ever read. I'm a sucker for brevity, but not brevity for the sake of it, but brevity paired with potency. And there is just so much packed into Gatsby, so much emotion and so much color. I remember reading that scene in the second chapter when Gatsby has this huge party and just marvelling at how beautifully it was painted. Great, great book.”
Previous recipients of the Fitzgerald Prize have been the retired Navy SEAL and bestselling author Clint Emerson (2022), Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Southern writer Rick Bragg (2021), the ground-breaking social and legal reformer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson (2020), accomplished Alabama authors Frye Gaillard (2019), Wayne Flynt (2018), Katherine Clark (2017) and Kim Cross (2016).
An Evening with Ta-Nehisi Coates will be held at the Davis Theatre in Montgomery, Alabama on Friday, Sept. 22 from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm. The evening will include the awarding of the 2023 F. Scott Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence by the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum followed by a discussion between Mr. Coates and Dr. Derryn Moten, Professor and Chair of History at Alabama State University. Earlier in the day, Mr. Coates, will speak to the students of ASU for a special presentation.
Regarding Mr. Coats and his visit, Dr. Moten states, "Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me attempts to explain racism in the United States to his teenage son which is an attempt to explain pseudo American Exceptionalism. One is reminded of James Baldwin's "Letter to my Nephew" where Baldwin attempts to explain the same realities. Alabama State University is delighted to have Coates speak on campus on September 22, 2023.
Tickets are $28 and are available at Eventbrite: https://aneveningwithtanehisicoates.eventbrite.com
Audience members are encouraged to submit questions for the discussion in advance using the Q&A submission link.
Q&A Submission Link:
https://fitzmuse.wufoo.com/forms/an-evening-with-tanehisi-coates/
Troy University’s Davis Theatre is located at 251 Montgomery St., Montgomery, AL 36104
Contact
The Fitzgerald Museum
Daron K. Harris
256-592-9153
thefitzgeraldmuseum.org
