Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896, F. Scott Fitzgerald first came to Alabama in the summer of 1918 as an Army lieutenant stationed at Camp Sheridan while training for the Great War. According to legend, he met Montgomery belle Zelda Sayre at a country-club dance. The pair married on April 3, 1920, and, thanks to the success of Fitzgerald's debut novel--published eight days before the wedding--instantly became symbols of the Roaring Twenties. Over the next two decades, Fitzgerald published three more novels--including his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby--and 160-plus short stories. He died in 1940, having fallen out of public favor. Within a decade, however, readers rediscovered his brilliance and he continues to be celebrated as one of America's greatest authors today. Kirk Curnutt is executive director of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society and serves as managing editor of The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review. He is professor and chair of English at Troy University. His office in downtown Montgomery looks out toward Pleasant Avenue, where Zelda Fitzgerald was raised. Curnutt is the author of The Cambridge Introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald, among other books, and the editor of The Oxford Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald.