E.L. Doctorow; photo by Nancy Crampton

Fall for the Book awards this year’s Fairfax Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts to E.L. Doctorow, one of our country’s most distinguished men of letters, whose collective fiction has offered a masterful chronicle of the American experience.

Doctorow — whose last novel, The March, won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award — will accept the 2009 Fairfax Prize on Thursday, Sept. 24, at 7:30 p.m., in the Concert Hall at George Mason University’s Fairfax, VA, campus. Doctorow will also read from his new novel, Homer & Langley, to be published on the eve of the festival.

In addition to The March, Doctorow’s novels include Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), Loon Lake, World’s Fair (winner of the National Book Award), Billy Bathgate (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award), and The Waterworks, as well as the short story collections Lives of the Poets and Sweet Land Stories. Ragtime was named one of the top 100 novels of the 20^th century by the Modern Library editorial board and was also adapted into an Academy Award-nominated 1981 film and a Tony Award-nominated 1998 musical.

In winning this year’s Fairfax Prize, Doctorow joins a distinguished list of past recipients that has included Tobias Woolf, Joyce Carol Oates, Mitch Albom and Michael Cunningham. The Fairfax Prize honors authors for writing and publishing works that contribute significantly to American or international culture; generously giving personal time and talents to the development of literature and literary endeavors; mentoring younger writers; and providing special service to the community of writers. The prize is sponsored by the Fairfax County Public Library Foundation.