On the first Saturday of every month, you can join the student volunteers of DAYLO: Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization for a Teddy Bear Picnic read-aloud at the Port Royal Farmers Market (1615 Ribaut Rd.). In collaboration with the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center, high school and college student volunteers from the Beaufort-based chapters of DAYLO gather at the gazebo in Naval Heritage Park from 9:30 a.m. to noon to read diverse, inclusive picture books to children and their families, inspiring a love of stories, [...]

“Wholeness. It all comes back. It’s all a circle.”–Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides Pat Conroy’s 1986 masterwork The Prince of Tides is the quintessential lowcountry novel, beloved by millions as their point of entrance into the lush southern geography, lyrical voice, and complex interweaving of fact and fiction which define the author’s literary legacy. Join Pat Conroy Literary Center executive director Jonathan Haupt and USC Beaufort English professor and Writer in Residence Ellen Malphrus for a book club discussion of the novel, its major [...]

The Pat Conroy Literary Center's monthly Open Mic Night will be presented as a virtual event, live-streamed to our Facebook page, on Thursday, September 11, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Our featured presenter is novelist Laura Leigh Morris, author of The Stone Catchers. Open Mic will also feature short readings of 3 to 5 minutes each by other writers in many genres, with host Melissa Whiteford St. Clair. Interested in reading as part of virtual Open Mic? Let us know at contact@patconroyliterarycenter.org. About Our Featured [...]

Silent Book Club Beaufort, a unique take on the traditional book club, will meet on Saturday, September 13, from 4:30 to 6:30PM at the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center (601 Bladen St.). A relaxed and pressure-free space for readers of all types, this community gathering invites book lovers to enjoy their current reads in a welcoming and peaceful atmosphere. Silent Book Club Beaufort is co-sponsored by the Conroy Center and the student book club DAYLO (Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization). Unlike traditional book clubs, Silent [...]

In this two-hour writing workshop led by Tim Conroy, poets will explore approaches to revision, considering the content and sound of each word, line, and stanza of each poem. Do you need to lower expectations to generate your first draft? Do you allow the poem to discover its true beginning? Do the prepositional phrases stall the poem into a nosedive? Do your verbs disappoint your poems? Are the adverbs really necessary? Does the poem need its current chronology? Have you played Jenga with the poem [...]

"A library could show you everything, if you knew where to look."—Pat Conroy, My Reading Life The author of "The Prince of Tides," "The Great Santini" and "The Water Is Wide," Pat Conroy (1945–2016) is synonymous with the literature of the Lowcountry. Pat Conroy Literary Center executive director Jonathan Haupt will discuss Conroy’s lifelong love of books and libraries—focusing on the roles public libraries, school libraries, and Pat's own personal library played in his writing life. Through video and audio clips, photographs, and published and [...]

SOLD OUT! Best-selling writer Pat Conroy (1945–2016) inspired a worldwide legion of devoted fans numbering in the millions, but none are more loyal to him and more committed to sustaining his literary legacy than the many writers he nurtured over the course of his fifty-year writing life. In sharing their stories, his fellow writers honor his memory and advance our shared understanding of his lasting impact on literary life in and well beyond the American South. Winner of 17 book awards, the anthology Our Prince [...]

How to Create Suspense: 5 Unforgettable Cliffhanger-Ending Techniques How do you keep the reader reading when the average adult's attention span is 8.25 seconds? Cliffhangers are a technique used by genre writers (who sometimes get a bad rap) to keep their readers reading. And isn’t that what we all aspire to, above everything? Because cliffhangers are sometimes associated with schlocky writing, that doesn't mean we should ignore their usefulness as a craft tool in all sorts of writing. We'll look at five chapter-ending cliffhanger techniques [...]

RSVP Required. Click the orange “Book a Program” button on our website to sign up! portroyalsoundfoundation.org We who live in the South Carolina Lowcountry are fortunate to be surrounded by its extraordinary nature – the marsh and its seasons, live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, 180 degrees of ever-changing sky, marsh and shore birds, crabs and dolphins and fish, the bright sunshine that lights this southern world, and of course, water…the ocean and rivers and their tides. In this workshop you’ll kayak on the Chechessee [...]

On the first Saturday of every month, you can join the student volunteers of DAYLO: Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization for a Teddy Bear Picnic read-aloud at the Port Royal Farmers Market (1615 Ribaut Rd.). In collaboration with the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center, high school and college student volunteers from the Beaufort-based chapters of DAYLO gather at the gazebo in Naval Heritage Park from 9:30 a.m. to noon to read diverse, inclusive picture books to children and their families, inspiring a love of stories, [...]