Award-winning author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates is coming to Alabama this month.

Coates is this year’s recipient of the 2023 Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence. Annually awarded by The Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, the prize honors an author whose work continues the legacy of storytelling “while also exemplifying the craft, wit, and social insight typified by F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

READ: Ta-Nehisi Coates to receive prize for literary excellence in Montgomery

Coates was a national correspondent for The Atlantic where he wrote about the intersection of race, culture, economics, and politics, including “The Case for Reparations,” a 2014 article that examined the effects of how housing discrimination and redlining marginalized generations of Black people.

Coates is also an author whose books include “The Beautiful Struggle” and “We Were Eight Years in Power.” His book “Between The World And Me” won the National Book Award in 2015. Coates penned Marvel’s “Black Panther” comic book series from 2016 to 2021 and “Captain America” from 2018 to 2021. Coates was also named a MacArthur Genius in 2019. His first novel, “The Water Dancer,” was also released that year.

Coates is the eighth recipient of the Fitzgerald Prize and will accept the award during “An Evening with Ta-Nehisi Coates Celebrating American Storytelling” on Friday, Sept. 22 at Ralph David Abernathy Hall on the campus of Alabama State University (the event was previously set for Troy University’s Davis Theatre). The event, which runs from 6:30-8 p.m., will include a discussion between Coates and Dr. Derryn Moten, the professor and chair of history at Alabama State University. The award ceremony and lecture tickets are $28 and available on Eventbrite. Organizers encourage potential audience members to submit questions for the discussion in advance using a submission link.

[Click here for the Q& A submission link]

Coates, who is also a renowned cultural critic, listed Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” in his 2010 piece “I Study White People,” a witty and satirical jab at claims that he ignores and maligns white people when writing about race and history. In the article, Coates examined books that had an early influence on his writing career. Here’s a look back at what he wrote about “The Great Gatsby”:

“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.”

It’s a sentiment Coates still holds more than a decade later.

“The Great Gatsby is one of my three favorite books ever,” Coates said in a recent interview with AL.com. “So, it’s a huge, huge honor.”