UPDATE: This event is now at full capacity
When: Saturday January 21, 2023; 5:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free | Seating is limited. Call 843-379-7025 to reserve in advance
Location: Pat Conroy Literary Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort, SC)
Conroy Center Hosts Four Award-Winning Novelists on January 21
Four award-winning novelists will read from and discuss their work at the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort) on Saturday, January 21, at 5:00 p.m. The Conroy Center is honored to host Mindy Friddle, author of Secret Keepers and The Garden Angel; Rebecca T. Godwin, author of Keeper of the House and Private Parts; J.C. Sasser, author of Gradle Bird; and Michel Stone, author of The Iguana Tree and Border Child.
This author event is free and open to the public. Books will be available for sale and signing. Seating is limited; please call 843-379-7025 to reserve in advance.
Prior to the public reading, the quartet of novelists will also lead a ticketed writers workshop, Creating Your Writing Practice, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. To learn more and register for the writing workshop, visit Eventbrite
Website: Facebook Event Page
About our authors:
Mindy Friddle’s novel, SECRET KEEPERS (St.Martin’s/Picador), won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. THE GARDEN ANGEL (St. Martin’s/Picador), her first novel, was selected for Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program. The South Carolina Arts Commission granted Mindy a Fellowship in Prose, and she has twice won the South Carolina Fiction Prize. Named a Walter E. Dakin Fellow in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Mindy has been awarded residencies at Ragdale and Bread Loaf. Mindy’s short fiction has appeared in storySouth, Orca, LitMag, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Southern Humanities Review, Phoebe, and many others. Regal House is publishing Mindy’s third novel, HER BEST SELF, in 2024. She lives on Edisto Island, South Carolina. Visit www.mindyfriddle.com for details and to sign up for her newsletter.
Rebecca T. Godwin has just been awarded the South Carolina Arts Commission’s Prose Fellowship for 2023. She has published two novels, KEEPER OF THE HOUSE (St. Martin’s), and PRIVATE PARTS (Longstreet). Her work has appeared in Paris Review, Oxford American, The Sun, Epoch, South Carolina Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She received MacDowell and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in the early 2000s. For 13 years she taught literature and writing at Bennington College, during which time she conceived and was faculty editor for plain china, an online journal showcasing undergraduate writing from around the country. She has recently completed a collection of linked stories and is revising two novels. More details may be found at rebeccatgodwin.com.
Born and raised in Metter, Georgia, J.C. Sasser started her professional career at age 12, working as a dishwasher, waitress, and cook at a truck stop off Georgia’s I-16. Over her life, she has worked as an envelope licker, tortoise tagger, lifeguard, Senate page, model, editor, water-polo coach, marine biologist, plant grower, software consultant, and 6-Sigma Black Belt. She is the award-winning author of GRADLE BIRD and her short stories have been published in multiple anthologies. She currently lives in the south Georgia woods in a WWII barracks with her husband, Thomas, along with their two sons, T.C. and Robert Esten, four dogs, Boo Reedy, Batman, Jethro, and Lola Faye, and a flock of frenzied chickens.
Michel Stone is a writer, educator, and community volunteer. Her novels BORDER CHILD (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) and THE IGUANA TREE (Hub City Press) have been compared by critics to the writings of John Steinbeck and both books have been optioned for film. She is the winner of the Mary Frances Hobson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters, the Patricia Winn Award for Southern Literature, and the South Carolina Fiction Award. Michel has published numerous stories and essays and her novels have been favorably reviewed by The San Francisco Chronicle, The New Yorker, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Charlotte Observer, Kirkus (starred review), Publishers Weekly (starred review) and others. Michel is a past board chair of the Hub City Writers Project and she has been awarded fellowships to Ucross, Wildacres, and Rowland Writers Residencies.
