Pat Conroy Literary Center

July 2024 Open Mic Night
2024-07-11 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
The Pat Conroy Literary Center’s monthly Open Mic Night will be held at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St.) on Thursday, July 11, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Our featured writer is novelist Rebecca Thompson, winner of the Ann Head Literary Prize and author of the duology The Girl of the Tree and Seeking the Truth. Open Mic will also feature short readings of 3 to 5 minutes each by other writers in many genres.
When: Thursday, July 11, 2024 at 6 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Price: Free · Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Where: Conroy Center (601 Bladen St.)
Interested in reading as part of Open Mic? Let us know at contact@patconroyliterarycenter.org
We want to build our community of writers and an appreciation for the art and talent of new, emerging, and long-time writers. Thank you for supporting this partnership!
Event Facebook Page
About our featured writer:
Rebecca Thompson started writing during the coronavirus pandemic, determined to complete her first book. Not only has she successfully self-published one novel as a teen author, but now two!
Thompson is the author of the novels The Girl of the Tree and its sequel Seeking the Truth. She is the 2024 winner of the Ann Head Literary Prize at Beaufort High School. She lives in the lowcountry of South Carolina with her mom, dad, brother, two cats, and fish.

This program and others like this would not be possible without your financial help for which, as always, Pat Conroy Literary Center gratefully thanks you.

An Evening with Jo Angela Edwins, Poet Laureate of the Pee Dee
2024-07-13 17:00 - 18:30
Saturday, July 13, 2024 – 5:00-6:30 PM EDT
Price: Free
Registration: Seating is limited; please call to reserve your spot: 843-379-7025.
Venue: Pat Conroy Literary Center | 601 Bladen St., Beaufort
Website: Facebook Event Page
The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an evening with Jo Angela Edwins, Poet Laureate of the Pee Dee and author of A Dangerous Heaven, on Saturday, July 13, at 5:00 p.m., at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Free and open to the public. Books will be available for sale and signing. Please call to reserve your seat in advance: 843-379-7025.
Edwins will also lead a poetry writing workshop earlier that afternoon, from 2:00-4:00 p.m.
About A Dangerous Heaven
A Dangerous Heaven creates personal and political conversations that resound through both the sacred and the secular worlds. Jo Angela Edwins has spent the past many years excavating those personal relationships which shape and haunt us. She turns the same observant eye on events happening around the word. From “The Last Wild Elephant Alive” to “Death, A Rock Icon, and Sewage Pipes” Edwins is able to draw the reader into seeing events from her own unique perspective.
“In A Dangerous Heaven, Jo Angela Edwins walks us through a multi-layered grief process for accumulated wrongs and losses: historical, biblical, global, national, and personal. “It is your responsibility to grieve,” one poem says, and this is not a command, but an acknowledgement. These poems don’t look away from wounds, especially those of women, and they don’t turn elsewhere for comfort, yet they leave me feeling seen and comforted. Everyone needs to read this book.”–Katie Manning, author of Tasty Other
“An intimate volume with cosmic reach, witty and compassionate, A Dangerous Heaven transports us through a wide range of emotions, carries us to lofty and surprising places which might be dangerous if we didn’t have Jo Angela Edwins’s sure hand to catch us, to place our feet firmly on home soil. Crafted to honor insight and emotion, these daring poems will keep us company over time, like trusted friends.”–Marilyn Kallet, author of Even When We Sleep
About the Author
Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in over 100 journals and anthologies, including Calyx, descant, The Hollins Critic, and New South. She is the author of the collection A Dangerous Heaven (Gnashing Teeth Publishing, 2023) and the chapbooks Bitten (forthcoming from dancing girl press, 2024) and Play (Finishing Line Press, 2016).
She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, and the SC Academy of Authors and is a Pushcart Prize, Forward Prize, Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry nominee. A native of North Augusta, she now lives in Florence, where she teaches at Francis Marion University and serves as the first poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.

This program and others like this would not be possible without your financial help for which, as always, Pat Conroy Literary Center gratefully thanks you.
