The New Yorker published a delightful piece about this year’s festival honoree, Tobias Wolff. It’s an article by acclaimed author George Saunders describing his wonderful writing teacher, Wolff, whom he calls Toby. Wolff was teaching in the creative writing program at Syracuse University in 1986 when Saunders started attending the program.
Both Wolff and Saunders are excellent authors, and we are delighted to be bringing Wolff to Rockville for the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival! We invite you to attend our events on Friday the 23rd and Saturday the 24th of October, 2026.
2026 Readings in Honor of the Winner of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award
Friday, October 23, 7-8pm
The Writer’s Center
4508 Walsh St
Bethesda MD 20815
Join us for an evening of tributes to Tobias Wolff. The author will be present at this event. This event is co-sponsored by us and The Writer’s Center.
This event will feature multiple award-winning author Richard Bausch, award-winning novelist Varun Gauri, PEN/Faulkner winner Mahreen Sohail, and Tobias Wolff himself, who won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.
This event is free for all and open to the public. Please RSVP here.
2026 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival
Saturday, October 24, 8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Montgomery College, Science Building
51 Manakee St.
Rockville, MD 20850
Click here to access the Google map.
This year’s winner of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature is Tobias Wolff. He will be our Festival Honoree, and Richard Bausch will be our Special Guest. The theme this year is “Growing Up Is Hard To Do . . “, in honor of Wolff’s bestselling memoir about his childhood.
Tobias Wolff is the author of the memoirs This Boy’s Life (1989) and In Pharaoh’s Army (1994), and he has also written novels and short story collections, including Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories (2008). His novel The Barracks Thief (1984) won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in September 2015. Wolff is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English, Emeritus, at Stanford, where he lives with his wife Catherine. They have three children and four grandchildren.
Richard Bausch is the author of thirteen novels, among which are Hello to the Cannibals (2002), Thanksgiving Night (2006), Peace (2008), Before, During, After (2014), and Playhouse (2023). His ten collections of short fiction include The Fireman’s Wife (1990), The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch, in The Modern Library (1996), The Stories of Richard Bausch (2003),Wives & Lovers: 3 Short Novels (2004), Something is Out There (2010),Living in The Weather of the World (2017) and, most recently, The Fate of Others (2025). His multiple honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award in Literature Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, the 2004 PEN/Malamud Prize; the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for his novel, Peace; and the Rea Award for Achievement in the Art of Short Fiction. In addition, his work has been adapted for three full length feature films. He has been with the Writing Program of Chapman University in Orange, CA since 2012.
This year’s Keynote Speaker, Deborah Tannen, will present “Can We Talk: How Ways of Talking Can Make or Break Relationships.”
Participants in the festival can optionally register for a Writing Workshop with one or two of this year’s Writing Workshop Leaders: Margaret Talbot, Fred Bowen, Nate Brown, Ron Charles, Hannah Grieco, and E. Ethelbert Miller.
Participants can also optionally view the film This Boy’s Life. They can also optionally go on a bus tour of Fitzgerald’s haunts in Rockville.
Click here to learn more about the festival on our website.
We’re looking forward to seeing you at both our Friday evening and Saturday events!
