CAP D’ANTIBES, France, June 14, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- During a celebrated ceremony at the iconic Hôtel Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera, the jury of the 2025 Prix Fitzgerald announced its latest laureate: Pulitzer Prize–winning author Richard Ford, recognized for his poignant novel Be Mine (Le paradis des fous, published in France by Éditions de l’Olivier).
A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available in this link.
The Prix Fitzgerald, created in 2011 by Marianne Estène-Chauvin, President of the Francis Scott Fitzgerald Academy and owner of Belles Rives Group, annually honors a work of fiction that embodies the spirit, elegance, and art of living associated with the American literary icon F. Scott Fitzgerald.
This year’s edition holds resonance, marking 100 years since the publication of The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s first stay in Juan-les-Pins in 1925, when he and Zelda moved into Villa Saint-Louis—now Hôtel Belles Rives. It was here, overlooking the same blue expanse of Cap d’Antibes, that Fitzgerald worked on Tender Is the Night, and where the mythos of the Riviera as a playground of writers, artists, and exiles began to crystallize.
Ford’s Be Mine, which revisits his beloved character Frank Bascombe, was praised for its reflection on aging, caregiving, and parenting in America itself, all told with Ford’s signature blend of clarity, wit, and empathy. The jury commended the novel for capturing the existential tensions of modern life with a tone and depth that echoes Fitzgerald’s legacy.
“My gratitude to the Prix Fitzgerald jury for their belief not just in my book but in books in general. We all stand on the shoulders of genius—and being here today at Hôtel Belles Rives, in the year we celebrate the centennial of The Great Gatsby, makes me believe it all possible.”
The Prix Fitzgerald ceremony was held on the terrace overlooking the romantic, rocky peninsula with its white pier facing the adjacent islands graced by the “green light” that once inspired Fitzgerald’s most famous novel. The celebration concluded with a Riviera-style dinner held on the legendary terraces of this historic landmark.
“Richard Ford’s Be Mine is a masterful—and rare—lesson in restraint, humanity, and emotional clarity. Ford dares to do what few still allow themselves: to write quietly, without flourish, about the subtle pain of fading feelings, the dignity of ordinary lives, and fidelity as an elegant form of melancholy. No grand gestures. No theatrics. Just clean, direct, implacable—and profoundly human—prose. A clarity without drama, yet marked by a light gravity that strikes with precision. It’s a novel that doesn’t try to shine—and that’s precisely why it does,” said Marianne Estène-Chauvin, President of the Francis Scott Fitzgerald Academy and owner of Groupe Belles Rives.
“Like Fitzgerald,” she continued, “Ford understands that the deepest truths live in silences, in hesitations, in sideways glances. He carries the elegance of disenchantment, the rejection of sentimentality—a style that never needs to raise its voice to move us. It is an honor—and, indeed, a distinctly Fitzgeraldian kind of jubilation—to welcome him among the Prix Fitzgerald laureates.”
Ford joins an esteemed list of past American laureates including Joyce Carol Oates (2024), Quentin Tarantino (2023), Jonathan Dee (2022), Jeffrey Eugenides (2019), Jay McInerney (2016), and Christopher Bollen (2015). Special distinctions have also included the Gatsby Prize to Thadée Klossowski de Rola and the Zelda Prize to Dominique Bona.
Each year, a jury of writers, journalists, and cultural figures—presided over by Bertrand de Saint Vincent, Deputy Director of Le Figaro—selects the Prix Fitzgerald recipient. Nominations are revealed in March, with finalists determined by mid-May, ahead of the June ceremony.
The Prix Fitzgerald remains a singular literary honor on the international scene, not only celebrating literary excellence but also perpetuating the mythos and joie de vivre of the Jazz Age on the Riviera—now more poignant than ever in this centennial year of The Great Gatsby.
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ABOUT HÔTEL BELLES RIVES
Hôtel Belles Rives is an Art Deco gem that stands above the sparkling blue waters of the Mediterranean. F. Scott Fitzgerald penned Tender is the Night here, and the property is a testament to the breezy extravagance of a bygone era yet reveals a modern design, offering 43 recently renovated rooms and suites. A gastronomic Mediterranean experience awaits at La Passagère, the onsite, one-star Michelin restaurant led by culinary maestro, Aurélien Véquaud. Classic cocktails can be found at the newly renovated Bar Fitzgerald, named for the property’s original resident. The hotel’s private beach features the Belles Rives Beach Restaurant, the Water Sports Club, and the jetty that’s home to the hotel’s private boat dock. Extend that sun kissed, blissed-out feeling with an innovative treatment by luxe Swiss skincare house, Valmont onsite at its namesake beauty corner. The property—with an ownership bloodline dating back to the 1930s—is now helmed by the fourth generation, the 43-year-old, Antoine Chauvin-Estène who is imparting an egalitarian and refreshing approach to this emblematic riviera classic.
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