The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an evening with award-winning poet Ray McManus, author of The Last Saturday in America, on Thursday, April 25, at 5:00 p.m., at the Rhett House Inn's garden (1009 Craven St., Beaufort). This is an outdoor event. 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. About the book and author "These are poems about boys listening to men who were once boys who [...]

The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center and the award-winning Rhett House Inn will host a monthly book club discussion of Pat Conroy's dozen books in order of publication, moderated by Charlene Spearen and Jonathan Haupt. Book discussions will be held monthly beginning at 6:30 p.m. Limited to 20 participants each month. $10/person. Advance registration required. Participants are expected to read the books and to come prepared to discuss them. January 25: South of Broad February 21: My Reading Life(rescheduled from February 22) March 28: The [...]

The Beaufort Bookstore and the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an evening with Mark Larson, award-winning educator and author of Working in the 21st Century: An Oral History of American Work in a Time of Social and Economic Transformation, on Monday, April 29, at 5:00 p.m., at the Beaufort Bookstore (2127 Boundary St, #15, Beaufort). Larson will be in conversation with two of the interview subjects of his book, Dr. N’kia J. Campbell, officer of academic initiatives for the Beaufort County School District, [...]

The South Carolina Academy of Authors (SCAA), in partnership with the Pat Conroy Literary Center, will hold its biennial induction weekend in Beaufort this May 3-5. The SCAA selects new inductees whose works have been judged culturally important. Each inductee, whether living or deceased, has added to South Carolina’s literary legacy by earning notable scholarly attention or achieving historical prominence. Including this year’s induction, the SCAA, founded in 1986, will have officially inducted more than 100 authors into its literary hall of fame. This year’s [...]

The Pat Conroy Literary Center's monthly Open Mic Night will be held at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St.) on Thursday, May 9, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Our featured writer is poet Elizabeth Leverton, author Peace, Rhododendron. Open Mic will also feature short readings of 3 to 5 minutes each by other writers in many genres. Interested in reading as part of Open Mic? Let us know at contact@patconroyliterarycenter.org. About Our Featured Writer Elizabeth Leverton earned a BA in English Lit and a master's [...]

The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an afternoon with debut novelist Caroline Cleveland, author of When Cicadas Cry, on Saturday, May 11, at 2:00 p.m., at Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Cleveland will be joined in conversation by Conroy Center executive director Jonathan Haupt. Free and open to the public. Books will be available for sale and signing through NeverMore Books. Please call to reserve your seat in advance: 843-379-7025. About When Cicadas Cry In this stunning debut by a South Carolina [...]

In partnership with NeverMore Books, the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an evening with award-winning novelist Mindy Friddle, author of Her Best Self, in conversation with Conroy Center executive director Jonathan Haupt, on Thursday, May 23, at 5:00 p.m., at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Books will be available for sale and signing through NeverMore Books. Seating is limited: please reserve in advance to attend this free author event: 843-379-7025. About Her Best Self Janelle Wolf longs to be the woman [...]

In this workshop, we discuss what it’s like as a literary magazine editor moving through the slush pile: sins we’re willing to forgive, and those we’re not. We’ll also explore tools to finding literary magazines that are a best fit for your work, how to rate them, and when to submit to what. Finally, we’ll look at strategies for submitting to contests. If submitting your work is in part a numbers game, then this class is about figuring out your best odds. This virtual workshop [...]

The Friends of Hunting Island, in partnership with the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center, will host a drop-in book signing for the newly published coffee table book, Up Here: The Hunting Island Lighthouse and its Lightkeepers, with authors Theodore Panayotoff and Linda Miller on Saturday, June 8th, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Attendance is free and open to the public; copies of the book will be available for sale and signing. Book purchases benefit the Friends of [...]

The Pat Conroy Literary Center's monthly Open Mic Night will be held virtually on Thursday, June 13, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Our featured writer is novelist Laura Mahaffey, author of Subject to the Tide. Open Mic will also feature short readings of 3 to 5 minutes each by other writers in many genres. Interested in reading as part of Open Mic? Let us know at contact@patconroyliterarycenter.org. About Our Featured Writer Laura Mahaffey writes romance with a dash of suspense, a hint of folklore, and [...]

The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center is honored to host a free public drop-in launch event for Donna Keel Armer’s Moringa: Tree of Life ~ Book 2 in the Cat Gabbiano Mystery Series. Join us on Saturday, June 15, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at 601 Bladen St., in downtown Beaufort. No advance registration required. Books will be available for sale and signing. Refreshments will be provided. The author will speak briefly at 5:45 p.m. About Moringa: Tree of Life (Book 2 in the Cat [...]

The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an evening with McCracken King Poston Jr., author of Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom, on Thursday, June 27, 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 through the Beaufort Bookstore. Please call to reserve your seat in advance: 843-379-7025. About the book and author Like a nonfiction John Grisham thriller with echoes of Rainman, Just [...]

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. Interested in reading as part of Open Mic? Let us [...]

In this workshop, we’ll discuss how imaginative unions in poems can lead to insight. We’ll look at poems like Billy Collins’ “Hippos on Holiday” or Heid E. Erdrich’s “Indigenous Elvis at the Airport” to see the effect of the juxtaposition of the ordinary and the unexpected. As a generative exercise, we’ll also do a writing activity to inspire the beginnings of such a poem. Saturday, July 13, 2:00-4:00 p.m. at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. Limited to 15 participants. (A minimum of five participants is [...]

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. Details and registration: https://mystifyingthefamiliar.eventbrite.com About the book [...]

The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an evening with retired surgeon turned novelist Martha B. Boone, author of Mother Charity, in conversation with retired FBI Special Agent turned novelist Dana Ridenour, author of the Lexie Montgomery Series, on Thursday, July 25, at 5:00 p.m., at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Books will be available for sale and signing. Seating is limited: please reserve in advance to attend this free author event: 843-379-7025. About Mother Charity Evolving from a naive girl to [...]

The Pat Conroy Literary Center’s annual Lowcountry Children’s Book Fair will be held on Saturday, July 27, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Port Royal Sound Foundation Weezie Educational Pavilion (310 Okatie Hwy, Okatie). The Maritime Center will also be open to the public from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and admission is free. Presented in partnership between the nonprofit Conroy Center, the Port Royal Sound Foundation, the Storybook Shoppe children’s bookstore, and DAYLO: Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization, this special event is [...]

The Pat Conroy Literary Center's monthly Open Mic Night will be held virtually on Thursday, August 8, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Our featured writer is poet Jessica Goody, author of Phoenix: Transformation Poems. Open Mic will also feature short readings of 3 to 5 minutes each by other writers in many genres. Interested in reading as part of Open Mic? Let us know at contact@patconroyliterarycenter.org. About Our Featured Writer Jessica Goody is the award-winning author of Defense Mechanisms (Phosphene Publishing, 2016) and Phoenix: Transformation [...]

Author Donna Baier Stein said that writers can use photography to "expand... meaning—not in terms of enlarging [an] original work, but in terms of offering more possibilities." In this workshop, we use a combination of professional and amateur photography, including our own family photos, in conversation with poems and short prose to generate creative new work. We'll use the unconscious subtexts of these photos, the befores and afters, and the memories they evoke. We'll also take a look at the objective properties of the photographs, [...]

The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an evening with novelist Zackary Vernon, author of Our Bodies Electric, on Friday, August 23, 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. Seating is limited; please call in advance to reserve: 843-379-7025. About the Book and Author: Tormented by his religious family and the broader conservative community of Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, fourteen-year-old Josh struggles with the pressure to [...]