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, [...]