It's proving to be a good year for St. Paul and its favorite son, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
A collection of Fitzgerald's "lost" stories (not truly lost, simply never published) will come out this spring from his longtime publisher, Scribner. There's a new biography on the horizon from Harvard University Press.
And the annual international F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Conference will take place here this summer in the writer's hometown for only the second time in its history.
You know what that means — tours of Fitzgerald's old neighborhoods, and photo exhibits of Fitzgerald's life, and "Gatsby Night" at the St. Paul Saints, and pool parties and live jazz and bus trips to White Bear Lake and Sauk Centre.
(Why Sauk Centre? Just to throw in a little history of that other great Minnesota writer, Sinclair Lewis.)
It also means scholarly papers and serious presentations, of course, with keynotes by Fitzgerald scholars James L.W. West III of Penn State, Anne Margaret Daniel, and others. There will be more than 75 presentations by scholars from all over the world.
Minnesota writers will also take part, including Kao Kalia Yang, Ellen Hart, William Kent Krueger and others.
The international conference is held every other year, alternating between the United States and Europe. It was first (and last) held in St. Paul in 2002.
