When author Ta-Nehisi Coates visits Montgomery to accept the 2023 Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence, it’s not about personal glory. It’s about honoring a source of inspiration.

“I’m not the most public of people,” said Coates, a Baltimore, Md., native who has a love for author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing style. “I guess the best way to put this is that I would not do this unless there was something that’s a really deep emotional connection. In this case, there really is.”

Alaina Doten, the Fitzgerald Museum’s executive director, said the award will be presented Sept. 22 in the auditorium at Alabama State University’s Ralph David Abernathy Hall, College of Education, 1625 Harris Way in Montgomery. The ceremony is 6:30-8 p.m., and includes a discussion between Coates and Dr. Derryn Moten, professor of history at ASU. General admission tickets can be purchased for $28 through an Eventbrite link at thefitzgeraldmuseum.org.

Guests should note that the location has been changed from the originally scheduled Davis Theatre. As of Tuesday, promotional and ticket sales links still listed the Davis.

Coates is an award-winning author and journalist, with bestsellers like “The Beautiful Struggle,” “We Were Eight Years in Power,” “The Water Dancer” and “Between The Word And Me.” His books promote social and racial understanding, and foster American storytelling.

Comic book fans know his work as well. He’s written for Marvel’s “Black Panther” and “Captain America.”

Looking back on his own origin story, Coates was once a 20-year-old student at historically Black Howard University in D.C. He recalls picking up Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel “The Great Gatsby” for the first time there and reading it one day. No, it wasn’t for an assignment.

“Much of what I learned, I didn’t learn in class,” he said. “I learned in the library. I learned with communication with other people. I learned in workshops.”

He said “Gatsby” is one of the most efficient works he’s ever read.

“It taught me how to write, man,” Coates said. “There’s a scene in ‘Between The World And Me’ where I try to describe what it was like to walk up on the yard at Howard University. When I was writing that, I would go back and read Fitzgerald’s description early in the book of a party at Gatsby’s house. I can remember how transfixed I was. Him talking about the discarding of the half oranges, and how much detail. That was about 70 years from its publication when I read it, and yet I felt like I was right there.”

He re-read “Gatsby” a couple of years ago and said it still holds up today.

“I always considered myself quite fortunate because I was never taught ‘Gatsby.’ I had to discover it on my own, and discover it outside of much of the dialogue around it,” said Coates, who these days is also a writing instructor.

Coates talked more about his life and writing style with the Advertiser: