Pat Conroy Literary Center

Workshop: Linked Poetry: Traditional and New Approaches
2024-02-19 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Register: patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Monday, February 19, 2024 · 2:00 – 4:00 pm EST
Cost: $40
Limited to 15 participants (A minimum of five participants is needed for this workshop.)
Venue: Pat Conroy Literary Center | 601 Bladen St Beaufort, SC 29902
Linked Poetry: Traditional and New Approaches is a poetry workshop for writers of all levels and ages who are looking to collaborate! We will begin with haiku writing exercises and build different styles of linked poems step by step. It is a highly interactive, hands-on workshop. Come with a writing partner or on your own.
Monday, February 19, 2:00-4:00 p.m. at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. Limited to 15 participants. (A minimum of five participants is needed for this workshop.)
Learn more and register at https://patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Website: Facebook Event Page
About our instructors:
Natasha Akery is a language arts teacher and poet from North Charleston, South Carolina. She devotes her writing practice to haiku with themes of heritage, motherhood, and spirituality. You can find her poems on Instagram (@writethreelines) and in I Am a Furious Wish: Anthology of Lowcountry Poets, Vol. 1 published by Free Verse Press. Her first chapbook, in [the name], is a collection of haiku inspired by the desert and biblical stories. It is available through Bottlecap Press.

Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Miho Kinnas is a writer, translator and poet living in Hilton Head Island, SC. She is the author of three poetry collections, Today, Fish Only (2014), Move Over Bird (2019) from Math Paper Press and Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias (2023) from Free Verse Press. A book of collaboration with E. Ethelbert Miller, We Eclipse into the Other Side was also published in 2023 by Pinyon Publishing. Her poem, Three Shrimp Boats on the Horizon was selected for Best American Poetry 2023.

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.

Workshop: Editing Basics for Authors, Led by Leslie Rindoks
2024-02-10 10:00 - 12:00 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Register: patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Saturday, February 10, 2024 · 10:00 am – 12:00 pm EST
Cost: $40
Limited to 15 participants (A minimum of five participants is needed for this workshop.)
Venue: Pat Conroy Literary Center | 601 Bladen St Beaufort, SC 29902
Dorothy Parker once said, “I hate writing, but I love having written.” For many of us that’s true, the fun begins after we’ve written—when we have something to play with, something to revise.
In this workshop, participants will come to love their inner editors and learn that editing can be fun. We’ll begin by looking first at other writers’ work, then move on to participants’ work. Writers will need to bring the first 20 or so pp of their work in progress. We’ll evaluate major story elements and explore how they might make the work stronger, more effective, and more memorable.
This in-person workshop will be held at the Pat Conroy Literary Center (601 Bladen St.), limited to 15 participants. (A minimum of 5 needed to hold the class.) $40/person.
Learn more and register at https://patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Website: Facebook Event Page
TESTIMONIALS:
“Because of Leslie, I am a much better writer. Her guidance and tutelage were invaluable.” —Dan Pliszka, author of Life is Great! (Even if Your Boat Flips Over)
“For my novel, and its iterations over time, I am thankful for Leslie’s sharp eyes and clear-headed comments.” —Karen Salyer McElmurray, author of Wanting Radiance
“Leslie Rindoks is the best in the business. She’s timely, quick-witted, steadfast, and kind. Her mentorship took me from a timid wannabe writer to an author writer with a distinct style.” —Amelia Wyatt, author of Ozzy and the Island and Mind the Gap
“I owe Leslie so much for her knowledge and her intuition as to what makes a good story. She certainly knows her business. In my mind, she is quite brilliant.” —Michael Ambrose, author of the forthcoming Learning to Land
About our instructor:
Originally from Chicago, Leslie Rindoks studied writing at Iowa Writers’ Workshop and illustration at Maryland Institute College of Art. She holds a BFA and MFA in design, and an MFA in creative writing and publication arts. The founder of Lorimer Press and WayWord Books (waywordbooks.com), she has edited more than 70 books. Passionate about combining words and images, she was the lead writer and book designer for LUCK, A Collection of Facts, Fiction, Incantations & Verse and her work was featured in Far From the Centers of Ambition and 100 Love Notes.
Writing as Avery Caswell, she is the author of the story collection MotherLoad and the novels Salvation and Dry Spell. (averycaswell.com)

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.

February 2024 Open Mic Night
2024-02-08 18:00 - 19:30 | Online – Facebook Live
The Pat Conroy Literary Center’s monthly Open Mic Night will be held virtually on Thursday, February 8, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Our featured writer is mystery novelist Sally Handley, author of The Mystery of the Bogus Blooms. Open Mic will also feature short readings of 3 to 5 minutes each by other writers in many genres.
When: Thursday, February 8, 2024 at 6 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Price: Free · Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Where: Facebook Live
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 The Mystery of the Bogus Blooms
When Holly Donnelly gets invited to speak about home-composting at Pineland Park Community College’s Eco-Fair, the last thing she and her sister Ivy expect is to become involved in, not one, but two murder investigations. Throw in a controversy over a student GMO experiment that yields unexpected results, and once again the gardening duo find themselves called upon to help those falsely accused. Are the murders and the experiment connected? Can the stalwart sisters find the real killer and save the students’ scholarships? Not without a little help from their friends. Joining them to solve the mystery are trusted allies from past adventures, Kate Farmer and her neighbors, Benny and Razor, along with the plucky Peppy Alvarez and rookie FBI agent Nicky Manelli.
About our featured writer:
Sally Handley is author of the Holly & Ivy cozy mystery series and the stand-alone suspense novel, Stop the Threat. She also writes a series on the Kindle Vella platform entitled The Adventures of Trixie, written from her faithful companion’s point of view. A member of Sisters in Crime, Sally hosts a monthly on-line Mystery Book Club and a Meet the Authors Series on her YouTube Channel, @sallyhandley1430. For more information, visit her website at www.sallyhandley.com.

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 Jeffrey Blount, author of Mr. Jimmy From Around the Way, in conversation with Rebecca Dwight Bruff
2024-02-01 17:00 - 19:00 | Beaufort County Black Chamber of Commerce, 711 Bladen St, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Thursday, February 1, 2024 – 5:00-7:00 PM EDT
Price: Free
Registration: Eventbrite
Venue: Beaufort County Black Chamber of Commerce | 711 Bladen Street Beaufort, SC 29902
Website: Facebook Event Page
“A heart-wrenching and beautiful story of a man and his family brought to its knees by the Civil War. . . . historical fiction at its finest.”–Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times Best-Selling Author of The Secret Book of Flora Lea
The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an evening with award-winning writer Jeffrey Blount, author of the newly published novel Mr. Jimmy From Around the Way, in conversation with fellow novelist Rebecca Dwight Bruff, author of Trouble the Water. Free and open to the public, this event will be held at the Beaufort County Black Chamber of Commerce, 711 Bladen St., on Thursday, February 1, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. A reception will follow the author’s presentation, with books available for sale and signing through the Beaufort Bookstore.
About Mr. Jimmy From Around the Way
After a highly publicized fall from grace, James Henry Ferguson attempts to flee from the chaos in his life. He ends up in a community he had never heard of before, one that has been neglected and ignored by everyone in rural Ham, Mississippi. A place of abject poverty, the neighborhood is commonly referred to as “Around the Way.”
Within a place forgotten by the rest of the world, politics can be a dangerous game. When a troubling discovery is made, the entire neighborhood is rocked to its core and James is forced to confront his own past in order to help the community have a future. He will have to find the strength to fight for the neighbors he once disregarded and avert a heart-breaking disaster.
A self-identified failure is forced to uncover the wisdom of his past in order to recognize that money can’t solve every problem. Full of never-ending twists and turns, no one can prepare themselves for the surprises in store. Mr. Jimmy From Around the Way is a story about failure, self-discovery, empowerment, and the possibility of redemption.
“Blount makes us pause to take an up-close look at poverty and racism in our collective backyard. This powerful novel shows the true meaning of ‘it takes a village,’ and that doing the right thing should be color blind.”—Karen White, New York Times bestselling author
“This tender story is for any of us who have fallen and found the only way up is by reaching out a hand to others.” —Cassandra King, author of Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeffrey is the award-winning author of three novels. His most recent book, The Emancipation of Evan Walls was the winner of the 2020 National Indie Excellence Award for African American fiction.
He is also an Emmy award-winning television director and a 2016 inductee to the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. During a 34-year career at NBC News, Jeffrey directed a decade of Meet The Press, the Today show, NBC Nightly News, and major special events. He is the first African-American to direct the Today show. He is also an award-winning documentary scriptwriter for films and interactives that are now on display in the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. In 2017 and 2018, Jeffrey served as Journalist in Residence and Shapiro Fellow at the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University. A Virginia native, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in Communications/Broadcast Journalism. Born and raised in Smithfield, Virginia, he now lives in Washington, DC.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
Rebecca Dwight Bruff is the author of the award-winning debut novel, Trouble the Water, published June 2019, and the non-fiction book, Loving the World with God, published 2014.
Bruff earned her Bachelors degree in education at Texas A&M University and Master and Doctorate degrees in theology, both from Southern Methodist University. In 2017, she was a scholarship recipient for the prestigious Key West Literary Seminar. She lives and writes in the South Carolina lowcountry.

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 novelist Pam Webber, author of Life Dust
2024-01-26 17:00 - 18:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Friday, January 26, 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 award-winning novelist Pam Webber author of the historical novel Life Dust, on Friday, January 26, 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.
About Life Dust
“Life Dust doesn’t limit itself to being a drama with romantic undertones, but a character-driven book where love, war and humanity attempt to co-exist. A brilliant piece of writing to be enjoyed by many.”—Southern Literary Review
“This novel is a testament to the heroes of the Vietnam War and an eye-opening experience for readers. . . . Highly recommended.”—Historical Novel Society
Life Dust tells a story of courage: the kind that goes to war; and the kind that stays home. Along the way, it reveals what love, respect, and caring are about and what duty, honor, and country really mean.
Nettie’s world turns upside down when Andy, her soulmate since the sandbox days, is deployed to Vietnam. Struggling to cope with the constant worry, she dives into her work as a nursing intern in a busy Northern Virginia emergency department. In the process, she becomes entangled in the lives of a tortured man with everything money can buy except a chance to live the life he wanted and a vengeful nursing supervisor whose discontent leads to a string of late-night trysts in the shadowy recesses of the hospital.
Half a world away, Andy leads a military reconnaissance squad in a dangerous and unforgiving jungle. He receives orders to escort a high-ranking female freedom fighter, Bien, to a clandestine meeting with a North Vietnamese officer who wants to defect. Having previously been raped and brutally beaten by North Vietnamese soldiers, Bien is suspicious of the officer’s motives. However, something tells her he may be the younger brother who was kidnapped as a child and conscripted into the army of her attackers. Andy believes his unit is walking into a trap that could cost them everything.
Struggling to survive in different worlds, Nettie and Andy navigate the best and worst of human nature as they try to find their way back to one another.

2023 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards Bronze Medalist in Christian (Historical Fiction)
2023 IPPY Awards Silver Medalist – Best Southern Regional Fiction
2023 Military Writers Society of America Awards Silver Medal in Historical Fiction

About Pam Webber
Pam Webber is a second career, best-selling author of historical fiction. Her novels, The Wiregrass, Moon Water, and Life Dust, have garnered multiple regional and national awards from organizations such as the Historical Novel Society, the Southern Literary Review, InD’Tale Magazine, Ingram Global Publishing, and the Military Writers Society of America.
As a former nursing educator, Pam approached the development of her skill as a creative writer by taking classes and studying independently with experts in character evolution, story arc, and literary infrastructure. She continued to hone her skill as a member of a small, professional writers group led by a talented and demanding New York Times bestselling author.
In her other life, Pam is a PhD prepared internal medicine nurse practitioner, an avid traveler, and nature lover. She and the love of her life, Jeff, live and work in the Northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. They are the parents of three wonderful children, Michael, Sarah, and Cindy, and the lucky grandparents of Jace, Albin, James, and Alexandra.

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.

Pat Conroy Book Club: South of Broad
2024-01-25 18:30 - 19:30 | The Rhett House Inn, 1009 Craven St., Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Thursday January 25, 2024 – 6:30-7:30 PM EDT
Price: $10
Registration: Register at Eventbrite | Limited to 20 participants
Venue: The Rhett House Inn | 1009 Craven St., Beaufort
Website: Facebook Event Page
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 on fourth Thursdays 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.
Discussions will be held at The Rhett House Inn (1009 Craven St., Beaufort)
Register at Eventbrite
January 25: South of Broad
February 21: My Reading Life
March 28: The Death of Santini
April 25: A Lowcountry Heart
ABOUT OUR DISCUSSION LEADERS
Dr. Charlene Monahan Spearen received her MFA degree in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric from the University of South Carolina. She is currently serving as the Public Relations and Special Projects Coordinator for Penn Center after a successful career in academia at Allen University. She served as the Program Coordinator for the University of South Carolina’s Arts Institute and was the Assistant Director for the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. In addition to her work throughout the Carolinas, Spearen has been a featured reader and Creative Writing instructor and scholar in County Monaghan and County Mayo, Ireland. She has published a full-length collection of poems titled A Book of Exquisite Disasters. Her poems have appeared in journals and publications throughout the United States.
Jonathan Haupt is the executive director of the nonprofit Conroy Center and the former director of the University of South Carolina Press, where he created the Story River Books fiction imprint with Pat Conroy, named by Garden & Gun magazine as one of “the top ten things to love about the South.” Haupt’s book reviews and author interviews have appeared in the Charleston Post and Courier, Lowcountry Weekly, Beaufort Lifestyle, Savannah Morning News’ Beacon magazine, Southern Review of Books, and Southern Writers Magazine’s Suite T blog. He is co-editor of the anthology Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy, the recipient of seventeen book awards. He serves on the boards of the Friends of South Carolina Libraries and the South Carolina Academy of Authors. In 2020, Haupt was recognized with the Doug Marlette Literacy Leadership Award presented by the Pulpwood Queens, the largest book club in the U.S.

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 Scott Gould in conversation with Mindy Friddle
2024-01-20 17:00 - 18:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Saturday, January 20, 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 visiting award-winning fiction writer Scott Gould, author of Idiot Men: Short Stories, in conversation with fellow award-winning writer Mindy Friddle, on Saturday, January 20, at 5:00 p.m., at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Books will be available for sale and signing. Please call to reserve your seat in advance: 843-379-7025.
(Gould will also be teaching a fiction workshop, Write What You Know Well Enough to Lie About, from 2:00-4:00 p.m. at the Conroy Center that same day.
About Idiot Men
“Scott Gould is a literary shapeshifter. A rough Southern man who writes about trucks, beer, dogs and doublewides with the finesse of a poet. Idiot Men is like the best country song you have ever heard. His writing breaks your heart but makes you rejoice that you are still alive to recover.”–Jane Stern, author of Ambulance Girl
With Strangers to Temptation, Things that Crash, Things that Fly, and The Hammerhead Chronicles, Scott Gould cemented his reputation as one of the most inventive, distinctive voices of Southern literature. In his latest collection, Idiot Men, he once again gathers a cast of unforgettable characters in eleven stories chock full of exceptional storylines and hilarious writing.
You’ll meet a trucker driver whose wife flees to Jamaica with her lover, leaving him to babysit her hairless tomcat, Princess Di; a male nurse who discovers a trailer full of counterfeit NASCAR paraphernalia during a home health visit; an amateur arsonist sentenced to a year in a Smokey the Bear suit; a disgruntled roofer with a bad back and a meth-dealing twin brother… these are just a few of the idiot men you’ll encounter in a collection of stories that will appeal to readers who relish literature with a Southern flavor.
Gould’s Idiot Men provides the stage for wayward characters who make poor choices in life and love against a backdrop of elegant prose. These tales recalibrate morality and convention as readers will grow to love the characters despite-and perhaps because of-their flaws. These diverse, rich stories are ultimately connected by the spellbinding voice of a true Southern storyteller.
About Author Scott Gould
Scott Gould is the author of five books, including The Hammerhead Chronicles, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction, and Things That Crash, Things That Fly, which won a 2022 Memoir Prize for Books. Other honors include a Next Generation Indie Book Award, an IPPY Award for Fiction, the Larry Brown Short Story Award and the S.C. Arts Commission Artist Fellowship in Prose. Gould’s latest book is the story collection, Idiot Men.
His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, Pangyrus, New Ohio Review, Crazyhorse, Pithead Chapel, Vessel, Garden & Gun, and New Stories from the South, among others. He teaches at the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities in Greenville, S.C.

About Interviewer Mindy Friddle
Mindy Friddle is author of the novel, Secret Keepers, (winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction). The Garden Angel, her first novel and SIBA bestseller, was selected for Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers.
The South Carolina Arts Commission awarded Mindy a prose fellowship, and she has twice won the state’s Fiction Prize. Mindy’s third novel, Her Best Self, will be published in May.

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.

Workshop: Fiction Writing Led by Scott Gould
2024-01-20 14:00 - 16:00 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Register: patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Saturday, January 20, 2024 · 2:00 – 4:00 pm EST
Cost: $40
Limited to 15 participants (A minimum of five participants is needed for this workshop.)
Venue: Pat Conroy Literary Center | 601 Bladen St Beaufort, SC 29902
Most decent fiction has its origins in one or more real life events. Or to put it another way: the fictional stories we write often rise from the realm of nonfiction. This course is designed to 1) discover something tucked away in your memory that’s story-worthy, and 2) start telling some lies about it. So, using a prompt, we’ll mine your memories for a number of recollections, then use one or more of those memories to begin a brand-new short story (which, of course, means we’ll be talking conflict and character, as well.) The goal of this session is to walk away with the first page or so of a new piece of fiction, full of good lies.
Saturday, January 20, 2:00-4:00 p.m. at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. Limited to 15 participants. (A minimum of five participants is needed for this workshop.) $40/person. Registration fee includes a copy of Idiot Men: Short Stories, the new collection from instructor Scott Gould (an $18 value).
Learn more and register at https://patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Following the workshop, at 5:00 p.m., Gould will also appear in conversation about Idiot Men with fellow award-winning novelist Mindy Friddle at the Conroy Center. The author conversation is free and open to the public.
Website: Facebook Event Page
About our instructor:
Scott Gould is the author of five books, including The Hammerhead Chronicles, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction, and Things That Crash, Things That Fly, which won a 2022 Memoir Prize for Books. Other honors include a Next Generation Indie Book Award, an IPPY Award for Fiction, the Larry Brown Short Story Award and the S.C. Arts Commission Artist Fellowship in Prose. Gould’s latest book is the story collection, Idiot Men.
His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, Pangyrus, New Ohio Review, Crazyhorse, Pithead Chapel, Vessel, Garden & Gun, and New Stories from the South, among others. He teaches at the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities in Greenville, S.C.

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 novelist Johnathon Scott Barrett, author of Ship Watch
2024-01-12 17:00 - 18:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Friday, January 12, 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 raconteur and writer Johnathon Scott Barrett, author of the debut novel Ship Watch, on Friday, January 12, at 5:00 p.m., at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Weather permitting, the event will be outside. Free and open to the public, this event is presented in collaboration with the Beaufort chapter of the Pulpwood Queens Book Club. Books will be available for sale and signing. Please call to reserve your seat in advance: 843-379-7025.
About Ship Watch
Set around the renowned and historical homestead at the center of the drama, Ship Watch weaves together six intertwined relationships that extend from the gentrified city of Savannah and into the wealthy enclaves of Sea Island, Highlands, and Atlanta’s Buckhead. The novel’s characters are drawn in the loom by the family’s elegantly formidable matriarch, Grand Martha, and form a multi-generational tapestry that includes the misfortunes of divorce and betrayal – but in more and even better measure opportunities for redemption, rediscovery, and the rarified gift of ‘second love.’ By combining an encompassing setting having a solid sense of place along with characters that are captivating and rather extraordinary, Ship Watch is a sometimes bittersweet, yet often comedic, Southern tour-de-force debut novel.
“Watch, the family’s long-owned grand plantation on the banks of the Savannah River, is contested, proverbial long knives are brandished. Much of this engrossing tale depicts place—Savannah, Highlands, and Sea Island—where the wealthy make merry and hold court.”—Jameson Gregg, Georgia Author of the Year, Luck Be A Chicken
“Storyteller extraordinaire, raconteur, and old-school bon vivant Johnathon Barrett celebrates the most glorious aspects of Southern life in all four of his wonderfully written books”—Janis Owens, award-winning and bestselling author of American Ghost and My Brother Michael
About Johnathon Scott Barrett
Johnathon Scott Barrett is a seventh-generation Georgian with a deep appreciation of the literary and culinary traditions of the South. He is the author of three widely acclaimed cookbooks, which critics hail for their entertaining stories and extensive recipes.
Besides writing, Johnathon is a CPA and has worked as a nonprofit executive for the last three decades. Currently, he serves as director of development for the State Botanical Garden of Georgia at UGA. He divides his time between homes in Winterville and Savannah, Georgia. Ship Watch is his debut novel.

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.

January 2024 Open Mic Night
2024-01-11 18:00 - 19:30 | 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, January 11, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Our featured writer is award-winning poet Miho Kinnas, author of Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias. Open Mic will also feature short readings of 3 to 5 minutes each by other writers in many genres.
When: Thursday, January 11, 2024 at 6 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Price: Free · Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Where: Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort)
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:
Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2019 and 2023), Miho Kinnas is a poet and translator. Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias is her third collection of poetry, following Today, Fish Only (2014) and Move Over, Bird (2019). A poetry of collaboration with E. Ethelbert Miller, We Eclipse into The Other Side, was published in 2023.
Elaine Equi selected her poem “Three Shrimp Boats Over the Horizon” for Best American Poetry 2023. Miho operates a community bookshop, An Island Bookshelf, on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. She holds an MFA in poetry from the City University of Hong Kong.

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 Colleen Coble, author of Fragile Designs, and Rhonda McKnight, author of The Thing About Home
2024-01-03 17:00 - 18:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Wednesday, January 3, 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 of conversation with visiting novelists Colleen Coble, author of Fragile Designs, and Rhonda McKnight, author of The Thing About Home, on Wednesday, January 3, at 5:00 p.m., at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Books will be available for sale and signing in collaboration with the Beaufort Bookstore. Please call to reserve your seat in advance: 843-379-7025.
About Colleen Coble and Fragile Designs
Colleen Coble is the author of more than seventy-five books and is best known for her coastal romantic suspense novels. Her books have been honored with awards ranging from the Best Books of Indiana, the ACFW Carol Award, the Romance Writers of America RITA, the Holt Medallion, the Daphne du Maurier, National Readers’ Choice, and the Booksellers Best. She has over 5 million books in print and has been on the bestseller lists of USA Today, ECPA, CBA, Publishers Weekly, and Amazon. She lives and writes in Indiana.
Colleen’s newest novel, Fragile Designs, is set in Beaufort. Since her police-officer husband Eric’s mysterious murder, Carly Harris has been struggling to support herself and their infant son. Her career as an antique dealer isn’t sustainable, nor is her dream of becoming a novelist. So when her grandmother proposes she and her two sisters restore the family’s large Beaufort home and turn it into a bed-and-breakfast, she immediately gets to work clearing out the house. In the process, she uncovers a family secret that Eric kept hidden. And an heirloom that the wrong person wouldn’t hesitate to kill for.
Carly turns to homicide detective Lucas Bennett for help. Soon, they’re entangled in a mystery with threads that lead all the way to the Russian mafia. Lucas has gotten in deep, and while he trusts his ability to keep Carly and her family safe, he begins to realize he’s vulnerable to an unexpected kind of danger. As they continue working closely together, Carly and Lucas realize they may have found something more precious than gold.
About Rhonda McKnight and The Thing About Home
Winner of the 2015 Emma Award for Inspirational Romance of the Year, Rhonda McKnight is the author of An Inconvenient Friend and What Kind of Fool. Themes of faith, forgiveness, and hope are central to her stories. Originally from a small coastal town in New Jersey, Rhonda now lives and writes in the South Carolina lowcountry.
In The Thing About Home, Casey Black needs an escape. When her picture-perfect vow renewal ceremony ends in her being left at the altar, the former model turned social media influencer has new fame—the kind she never wanted. With her personal and business lives in shambles, Casey runs from New York City to South Carolina’s Lowcountry hoping to find long-lost family.
What Casey doesn’t expect is a postcard-worthy property on a three-hundred-acre farm, history, culture, and a love of sweet tea. She also meets Nigel, the farm manager whose friendship has become everything she’s never had. Through the pages of her great-grandmother’s journals, Casey discovers her roots run deeper than the Lowcountry soil. She learns that she has people, a home, a legacy to uphold, and a great new love story—if only she is brave enough to leave her old life behind.

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.

December 2023 Open Mic Night
2023-12-14 18:00 - 19:30 | Sandies, 711 Bladen St., Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
In partnership with the South Carolina Writers Association, the Conroy Center’s monthly Open Mic Night will be held at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St.) on Thursday, December 14, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Our featured writer is Robert Maynor, author of The Big Game Is Every Night, winner of the South Carolina Novel Series.
When: Thursday, December 14, 2023 at 6 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Price: Free · Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Where: Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort)
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:
Robert Maynor is from the Lowcountry of South Carolina. He lives and writes in a patched-up fish camp on the bank of the Edisto River, the longest free-flowing blackwater river in North America. His fiction explores the spectrum of complexities and contradictions in the contemporary American South. His short stories have appeared in Blood Orange Review, BULL, The Carolina Quarterly, and CRAFT, among other outlets. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and he is the past recipient of the Larry Brown Short Story Award and the Coker Fellowship in Fiction from the South Carolina Academy of Authors. The Big Game Is Every Night is his debut novel. www.robertmaynor.com
“Written in spare yet evocative prose, Robert Maynor’s The Big Game is Every Night is a quiet and powerful meditation on broken families, fractured friendships, the pain of reckoning with having the thing that most defines you taken away in an instant, and the legacy violence leaves in its wake.”—John Vercher, author of After the Lights Go Out
“One of the most honest works of fiction I have ever read. The Big Game Is Every Night is a bruised and brutal debut about a boy on the precipice of manhood and all the terror it entails. Maynor’s novel made me want to cradle my two sons and never let go.” —J.C. Sasser, author of Gradle Bird

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.

Workshop: When the “Heat of Feeling Warms the Intellect” Led by Jacquelyn Markham
2023-12-12 18:00 - 19:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Register: patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Tuesday, December 12, 6:00-7:30 p.m. EDT
Cost: $45
Limited to 15 participants (A minimum of five participants is needed for this workshop.)
Venue: Pat Conroy Literary Center | 601 Bladen St Beaufort, SC 29902
Have you ever struggled with the shape and form of your poem? Or, simply wondered what form best fit the experience you wanted to express? Whether your poem is inspired by the “heat of feeling” or you must invite the muse to your poem, the interplay between form and content is important to your creative process. In this generative workshop, we will draw on guidance from poets Denise Levertov and Mary Oliver, as we explore different containers for our experiences. We will move from organic form through free verse to formal patterns, such as the cinquain and rondeau, to see our experiences take shape in new ways.
Who should attend this workshop? Those who love language and long to express their experiences in words. Any level can take away some tips for the process of hearing and expressing what Levertov calls our “constellations of experience.”
Tuesday, December 12, 6:00-7:30 p.m. at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. Limited to 15 participants. (A minimum of five participants is needed for this workshop.) $45/person.
Learn more and register at https://patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Website: Facebook Event Page
About our instructor:
Dr. Jacquelyn Markham has been writing, teaching, and publishing poetry for over three decades. She earned a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing with a focus on poetry from Florida State University. Her recent chapbook, Rainbow Warrior (Finishing Line Press, 2023), adds to her many publications in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Archive: South Carolina Poetry Since 2005, Adrienne Rich: A Tribute Anthology, Lullwater Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, The High Window, Woman and Earth, among others. A recipient of numerous grants and awards for literary merit, she has also published The Complete Poetry of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1884-1935) for which she was awarded the Adele Mellen Prize for distinguished contribution to scholarship.
Dr. Markham has taught writing for universities throughout the southeast as well as in community settings. Currently, she mentors poets and writers while living and writing near the coast 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.

An Evening with Eat It and Like It host Jesse Blanco, author of Savannah Food Crawls
2023-12-08 17:00 - 18:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Friday, December 8, 2023 – 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 of with Eat It and Like It host Jesse Blanco, author of Savannah Food Crawls, in conversation with food and travel writers Lynn and Cele Seldon.
Free and open to the public, this event will be held on Friday, December 8, at 5:00 p.m., at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Weather permitting, the event will be outside. Books by all three authors will be available for sale and signing. Please call to reserve your seat in advance: 843-379-7025.
About Jesse Blanco and Savannah Food Crawls
Savannah Food Crawls: Touring the Neighborhoods One Bite and Libation at a Time is an exciting culinary tour through one of Georgia’s most beautiful cities. Each crawl is the complete recipe for the perfect tourist day, a new way to experience your own city, or simply great food stories to enjoy from home. Put on your walking shoes and your stretchy pants and dig into Savannah one dish at a time.
Jesse Blanco is, without question, one of Savannah’s most recognizable personalities. His laid-back style and ability to connect with viewers and readers remain his calling card following a 24-year career in television news. During his 5 years as primary news anchor at the local FOX affiliate, Jesse always found creative ways to connect with his audience. That talent extended to his weekly column in the Savannah Morning News, which very quickly became one of the paper’s most popular features from 2012 to 2018.
In 2010, Jesse and his business partner created a blog and later a television show dedicated to the underappreciated side of Savannah’s food scene. Four years later, Savannah’s food scene exploded and Eat It and Like It found itself sitting in the front row to witness it all. Since 2014 he’s been the Savannah area’s only full-time food writer. This year, his first book documenting Savannah’s food scene, Savannah Food Crawls, was published, to be followed next year by Charleston Food Crawls.
Jesse was born in California but calls Miami his hometown. Having been raised in a very large Cuban-American family where the genetic makeup consists of food, music, dancing, laughing, and friendship. Throw in an insatiable desire to travel and explore and you get someone who is only happy learning or trying new things. Jesse is married with one child.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWERS
Jesse will be interviewed by husband and wife writers Lynn and Cele Seldon, the authors of 100 Things to Do in Savannah Before You Die, 100 Things to Do in Charleston Before You Die, and countless travel and food articles appearing in local, regional, and national publications.

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 Halle Hill, author of Good Women
2023-12-07 17:00 - 18:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Thursday, December 7, 2023 – 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
“A stunning slow burn brimming with observation, emotion, and incident.”—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an evening with award-winning writer Halle Hill, author of the newly published story collection, Good Women, on Thursday, December 7, at 5:00 p.m., at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St.). Books will be available for sale and signing. Please register in advance at 843-379-7025.
About Good Women
“In Halle Hill’s Good Women, we meet mothers and daughters, lovers and friends, saints and aint’s––all longing for something, some place, someone. They are curious, messy, and determined, and Hill’s fierce and dazzling pen lets us feel every ounce of their complicated desires. Every mistake, every realization, every triumph, every tragedy. This is a fantastic firecracker of a collection I’ll return to again and again!”—Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
“This heralds a bright new talent.”—Publishers Weekly
In her dynamic debut, Halle Hill’s Good Women delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South. A woman boards a Greyhound bus barreling toward Florida to meet her sugar daddy’s mother; a state fair employee considers revenge on a local preacher; a sister struggles with guilt as she helps her brother plan to run away with a man he’s seeing in secret; a young woman who works for a scam for-profit college navigates the lies she sells for a living.
Darkly funny and deeply human, Good Women observes how place, blood ties, generational trauma, obsession, and boundaries―or lack thereof―influence how we navigate our small worlds, and how those worlds so often collide in ways we don’t expect. Through intimate moments of personal choice, Hill carefully shines a light on how these twelve women shape and form themselves through faith and abandon, transgression and conformity, community, caution, and solitude.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Halle Hill is from East Tennessee and lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A graduate of Maryville College and the M.F.A. Writing program at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), she is the winner of the 2021 Crystal Wilkinson Creative Writing Prize and was a finalist for the 2021 ASME Award for Fiction. Her short stories have been published in Joyland, New Limestone Review, Southwest Review, and The Oxford American, where she won the 2020 Debut Fiction Prize. https://hallehill.com

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.

Pat Conroy Book Club: The Pat Conroy Cookbook
2023-11-30 18:30 - 19:30 | The Rhett House Inn, 1009 Craven St., Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Thursday November 30, 2023 – 6:30-7:30 PM EDT
Price: $10
Registration: Register at Eventbrite | Limited to 20 participants
Venue: The Rhett House Inn | 1009 Craven St., Beaufort
Website: Facebook Event Page
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 on fourth Thursdays 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.
Discussions will be held at The Rhett House Inn (1009 Craven St., Beaufort)
Register at Eventbrite
Future discussion dates will be announced this fall.
ABOUT OUR DISCUSSION LEADERS
Dr. Charlene Monahan Spearen received her MFA degree in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric from the University of South Carolina. She is currently serving as the Public Relations and Special Projects Coordinator for Penn Center after a successful career in academia at Allen University. She served as the Program Coordinator for the University of South Carolina’s Arts Institute and was the Assistant Director for the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. In addition to her work throughout the Carolinas, Spearen has been a featured reader and Creative Writing instructor and scholar in County Monaghan and County Mayo, Ireland. She has published a full-length collection of poems titled A Book of Exquisite Disasters. Her poems have appeared in journals and publications throughout the United States.
Jonathan Haupt is the executive director of the nonprofit Conroy Center and the former director of the University of South Carolina Press, where he created the Story River Books fiction imprint with Pat Conroy, named by Garden & Gun magazine as one of “the top ten things to love about the South.” Haupt’s book reviews and author interviews have appeared in the Charleston Post and Courier, Lowcountry Weekly, Beaufort Lifestyle, Savannah Morning News’ Beacon magazine, Southern Review of Books, and Southern Writers Magazine’s Suite T blog. He is co-editor of the anthology Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy, the recipient of seventeen book awards. He serves on the boards of the Friends of South Carolina Libraries and the South Carolina Academy of Authors. In 2020, Haupt was recognized with the Doug Marlette Literacy Leadership Award presented by the Pulpwood Queens, the largest book club in the U.S.

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 Linda Lovely, author of A Killer App
2023-11-29 18:00 - 19:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Wednesday November 29, 2023 – 6:00-7:30 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 mystery novelist Linda Lovely, author of A Killer App (An HOA Mystery), on Wednesday, November 29, at 6:00 p.m., at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Books will be available for sale and signing. Please call to reserve your seat in advance: 843-379-7025.
In keeping with the themes and plot of her newest novel, Linda will also be discussing AI (Artificial Intelligence) and its implications for writers and readers.
About A Killer App
Kylee Kane, a security consultant for Welch HOA Management, finds the first victim, Andy Fyke, crumpled at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Kylee suspects his fall’s no accident and is tied to Andy’s campaign to prohibit rentals in his Hilton Head Island community. Yet, Andy’s obvious enemies have ironclad alibis. When another Lowcountry HOA retiree dies in a hit-and-run boat tragedy, Kylee begins to think the incidents are linked-even though the victims and their assailants have little in common.
The link is the Chameleon, an Artificial Intelligence expert, who can create a deepfake of almost anyone-living or dead. Even more frightening is the Chameleon’s ability to seek out disturbed souls and laser-focus their rage. A talent employed to compel subjects to act as surrogate assassins. When Kylee begins to pursue the Chameleon, the AI expert decides it’s time to groom an assassin to permanently sideline Kylee.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A Killer App is Linda Lovely’s eleventh mystery/suspense novel. Whether she’s writing cozy mysteries, historical suspense or contemporary thrillers, her novels share one common element-smart, independent heroines. Humor and romance also sneak into every manuscript.
Her work has been recognized as a finalist by such prestigious awards as RWA’s Golden Heart for Romantic Suspense and Thriller Nashville’s Silver Falchion for Best Cozy Mystery. A long-time member of Sisters in Crime and former chapter president, Lovely also belongs to Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. She lives on a lake in Upstate South Carolina with her husband, and enjoys swimming, tennis, gardening, long walks, and, of course, reading.
As part of her discussion of AI, Lovely will also address: What prompted her to create a villain with expertise in AI? How did she investigate the tools at the disposal of an AI-savvy bad actor? How does AI respond if you ask it about potential perils for humanity…and benefits? How does AI impact authors? What’s the immediate impact for authors in regard to publishing contracts and copyright infringement? Are there legitimate and ethical ways for authors to use AI? How many books are currently being generated by AI and sold in competition with human author creations? What did the screen writers win in their strike against the studios? What protections exist for cover artists and designers? How can readers determine if the books they’re considering buying are AI-generated? Why should they care? What does AI mean long-term for the publishing world?

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 Quitman Marshall, author of Swampitude
2023-11-27 17:00 - 18:30 | Beaufort Bookstore, 2127 Boundary St, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Monday, November 27, 2023 – 5:00-6:30 PM EDT
Price: Free
Registration: Seating is limited; please call to reserve your spot: 843-525-1066.
Venue: Beaufort Bookstore | 2127 Boundary St. #15, Beaufort
Website: Facebook Event Page
Beaufort Bookstore and the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an evening with poet and writer Quitman Marshall, author of Swampitude: Escapes with the Congaree, on Monday, November 27, at 5:00 p.m. at the Beaufort Bookstore (2127 Boundary St #15, Beaufort).
This event is free and open to the public. Books will be available for sale and signing. Seating is limited; please call to reserve your spot: 843-525-1066.
ABOUT Swampitude
A Finalist for the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize
“Swampitude is the kind of book I look for…. I love its mix of the land and the personal and the philosophical. It’s marvelous….”–Joe Mackall, editor, River Teeth Journal
Swampitude: Escapes with the Congaree explores and meditates upon the social, literary, historical, personal, ecological, psychological, and political meanings of a swamp: swamps in general, and a particular swamp, the Congaree in the center of South Carolina, which has been designated a United Nations Biosphere Reserve and is now Congaree National Park.
A magical place of escape and fecundity, the Congaree Swamp, emblematic of all such often forbidding terrains, is the largest old-growth river bottom forest in the United States. It is in the American South and has filtered much of that region’s history. The Congaree is also lucky to have gathered an environmental movement, escaped the fate of most similar wetlands, and to continue to flood, drain, and provide refuge for all creatures in need of it. This book celebrates the survival, the stories, and the continuance of such places.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in South Carolina, Quitman Marshall grew up in the swamp. He has published five books of poetry, including You Were Born One Time (2014), which won the SC Poetry Archives Book Prize. A winner of the Writers Exchange Award sponsored by Poets and Writers, Inc., and the founding coordinator of the Literary Series at the Spoleto Festival, USA, he has lived in Barcelona, Washington, DC, Amherst, MA, New York City, the suburbs of Paris, and presently in Beaufort, SC, with his family. He works as a writer, editor, translator, and teacher.
Peggy Peattie is a multiple award-winning photo-journalist with 40 years experience. She worked for a decade in Los Angeles before joining The State newspaper in SC. There she published Down in Dixie, a documentary of the racial tensions around the confederate flag. Back in San Diego, she concentrates on stories of the border with Mexico and the unhoused community.

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.

Workshop: Strong Currents: Writing About Place, Led by Patricia Foster
2023-11-16 17:00 - 19:00 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
CANCELED: This scheduled event has been canceled due to the presenter’s COVID diagnosis. We regret the inconvenience to those who have registered.
Register: patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Thursday, November 16, 5:00-7:00 p.m. EDT
Cost: $45
Limited to 15 participants (A minimum of five participants is needed for this workshop.)
Venue: Pat Conroy Literary Center | 601 Bladen St Beaufort, SC 29902
“. . . feelings are bound up in places.” –Eudora Welty
This workshop will be an immersive writing class focused on the narrative terrain of place and its possibilities for writers of memoir and the personal essay. This means we will explore our inner maps of experience and memory, assessing the physical texture and evocative details of a place (be it a room, a meadow, a neighborhood, a town, or a part of the country) as well as the value systems and moral struggles within that place (what is approved/silenced /avoided/revered/made nostalgic).
In this workshop, we will make lists, use repetitive phrases for rhythmic nuance, do free-writes, and use close readings of published essays/memoirs to guide us. As in all writing, we are giving ourselves permission to take risks and surprise ourselves, to allow our insights and experience to organize the writing.
Thursday, November 16, 5:00-7:00 p.m. at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. Limited to 15 participants. (A minimum of five participants is needed for this workshop.) $45/person.
Learn more and register at https://patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Website: Facebook Event Page
About our instructor:
Patricia Foster is the author of Written in the Sky: Lessons of a Southern Daughter, All the Lost Girls (PEN/Jerard Award), Just beneath My Skin (starred Kirkus Review), Girl from Soldier Creek (SFA Fiction Award), and editor of four anthologies, including Minding the Body: Women Writers on Body and Soul.
She has won a Pushcart, a Florida Arts Council Award, an Iowa Dean’s Scholar Award, a Clarence Cason Award, a Yaddo fellowship and many other awards. She graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop and has been a professor in the MFA Program in Nonfiction at the University of Iowa for 25 years.

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 Patricia Foster
2023-11-15 17:00 - 18:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
CANCELED: This scheduled event has been canceled due to the presenter’s COVID diagnosis. We regret the inconvenience to those who have registered.
Wednesday November 15, 2023 – 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 award-winning writer Patricia Foster, author of Written in the Sky: Lessons of a Southern Daughter, on Wednesday, November 15, at 5:00 p.m., at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Books will be available for sale and signing. Please call to reserve your seat in advance: 843-379-7025.
About Written in the Sky: Lessons of a Southern Daughter
“Taking a cue from James Baldwin, who found the innocence of privileged white Americans appalling, Patricia Foster has recounted her own trajectory from clueless small-town Southern girl to a hard-won loss of innocence about the reality of racism…. A stunningly written, unique and vital memoir.”–Phillip Lopate, editor of The Art of the Personal Essay from the Classical Period to the Present
In Written in the Sky: Lessons of a Southern Daughter, award-winning essayist Patricia Foster provides a double portrait of her family and her native region. A book of deeply personal essays, Foster interrogates the legacy of racial tension in the South and the way race, class, gender, and white privilege are entwined in her family story.
Interviewing girls at Booker T. Washington High School in Tuskegee, Alabama, visiting the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and exploring Africatown in Plateau, Alabama, Foster reflects on the racial scars and crossroads in her southern past as a way to reckon with the intimate places of her region’s wounding and grief.
In this story of the South, a sense of place emerges not only from family histories and cultural traditions but also from wrestling with a culture’s irreconcilable ideas; the hard push to determine what matters. For Foster, what matters are the shadow stories beneath our mythologies, the complicated and radiant narratives that must be excavated and reckoned with.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patricia Foster is the author of All the Lost Girls (PEN/Jerard Award), Just beneath My Skin (starred Kirkus Review), Girl from Soldier Creek (SFA Fiction Award), and editor of four anthologies, including Minding the Body: Women Writers on Body and Soul.
She has won a Pushcart, a Florida Arts Council Award, an Iowa Dean’s Scholar Award, a Clarence Cason Award, a Yaddo fellowship and many other awards. She graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop and has been a professor in the MFA Program in Nonfiction at the University of Iowa for 25 years.

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.

November 2023 Open Mic Night
2023-11-09 18:00 - 19:30 | Online – Facebook Live
Our monthly virtual Open Mic Night is presented in partnership between the Pat Conroy Literary Center and the South Carolina Writers Association. Our featured writer for November is Halle Hill, author of the story collection Good Women. Join us live on the Conroy Center’s Facebook page for readings by a pantheon of participating writers from in and beyond our South Carolina lowcountry.
When: Thursday, November 9, 2023 at 6 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Price: Free · Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Where: Facebook Live
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:
Halle Hill is from East Tennessee and lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A graduate of Maryville College and the M.F.A. Writing program at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), she is the winner of the 2021 Crystal Wilkinson Creative Writing Prize and was a finalist for the 2021 ASME Award for Fiction. Her short stories have been published in Joyland, New Limestone Review, Southwest Review, and The Oxford American, where she won the 2020 Debut Fiction Prize. https://hallehill.com
“In Good Women, Halle Hill gifts us an unflinching peek at women who are trying, women who are aching, women who are running their hands along the walls of their dark hearts, fumbling for the light. Important and beautifully written, this collection is alive with bite and verve tick-tick-ticking on every page.”—Leesa Cross-Smith, author of Whiskey & Ribbons
“A stunning slow burn brimming with observation, emotion, and incident.”—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

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.

Workshop (4 Sessions): Fireflies at Night Flash Fiction with Amber Wheeler Bacon
2023-11-08 18:00 - 20:00, 2023-11-01 18:00 - 20:00 | Online – ZOOM
Register: patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
A series of 4 sessions: Wednesdays, October 11 & 18 and November 1 & 8, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Cost: $45 per session or $150 for the series
Limited to 15 participants (A minimum of five participants is needed for this workshop.)
Online: Zoom
Writers from Grant Faulkner to Molly Giles have described flash fiction with metaphors ranging from a coyote appearing in your yard at night, making the world a little more feral, more dangerous, to a firefly flickering on a summer’s night, captivating and fleeting. They’re called flash, microfiction, short shorts. They’re the love child between a short story and a poem. Etgar Keret says they’re like Kool-Aid, a partial story that only becomes real once it mixes with a reader. You get the point: flash fictions are things of beauty—short, maybe, but powerful, otherworldly even.
In this class, we’ll study some of the best flash fictions around, from Amy Hempel to Venita Blackburn. We’ll write one to two flash fiction pieces each week and share our work for feedback in small groups. There will be optional homework and extra prompts for each week. The point of this class is to GENERATE, to have fun, to learn something new about stories and ourselves, but mostly to create new work. Small flash prompts, both fiction and nonfiction, can be rejuvenating, reminding me of the joys in small work, the pleasures in a good line, or even one word that can turn a whole story on its head.
It’s a busy time. While these classes do build on one another, it’s also possible to attend only one, two, or three, skipping those that fall on inconvenient nights. Those who sign up for all 4 classes will also have access to video recordings of the sessions. Whether you’re stuck in the middle of a big project or just want to practice writing in this form, come join in and let’s write some fireflies.
This interactive writers workshop will be held as an online video conference call through Zoom. Details for joining the video call will be provided to all participating writers after registering.
A series of 4 sessions: Wednesdays, October 11 & 18 and November 1 & 8, 6:00-8:00 p.m. on Zoom. Limited to 15 participants. (A minimum of five participants is needed for this workshop.) $150 for all 4 sessions + access to video recordings, or $45/session
Student Testimonials
“Wonderful teacher, fabulous course. I learned so much.”
“Amber Wheeler Bacon is a generous, talented, personable, inspiring teacher.”
“I found the prompts incredibly helpful. It helped me see the potential in stories that I would not have otherwise thought of.”
“I really enjoyed all the different prompts, especially because they each challenged me to think in a new way and seek out further creativity in my writing.”
Learn more and register at https://patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Website: Facebook Event Page
About our instructor:
Amber Wheeler Bacon is a writer, editor, and teacher whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Ecotone, Epiphany, Five Points, New Ohio Review, Post Road, Prairie Schooner and Witness. You can find her writing online at Ploughshares and CRAFT. She is the recipient of the 2018 Breakout Writers Prize sponsored by The Author’s Guild and a 2021 scholarship from Bread Loaf Environmental.
In 2020, her story collection was a finalist for Hub City Press’s C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize and Moon City Press’s Short Fiction Award. She received the 2022 Lit/South Award for flash fiction. She was a finalist for the 2023 Chautauqua Janus Prize, nominated by Ecotone. Amber has an MFA from Bennington College, teaches at Coastal Carolina University and lives by the beach in 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.

An Evening with Novelist Maddie Dawson
2023-11-02 17:00 - 18:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Thursday November 2, 2023 – 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 novelist Maddie Dawson, author of Snap Out of It, on Thursday, November 2, at 5:00 p.m., at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort). Books will be available for sale and signing. Please call to reserve your seat in advance: 843-379-7025.
About Snap Out of It
A funny, warmhearted novel about falling in love, falling apart, and pulling it all together again by the bestselling author of Matchmaking for Beginners.
After three marriages and a lot of living, resilient Billie Slate knows exactly what trouble love can bring. Now she’s reinvented herself as the Heartbreak Bunny, an on-call performance artist who can heal anyone who’s been burned by that four-letter word, LOVE, by hopping about and whisking away sad mementos from their past relationships. Call it magic. Call it peculiar. But her bunny costume is as perfect as her breakup mantra: SNAP OUT OF IT.
As Billie’s business goes viral and skyrockets her to sudden fame, her comfortable life turns surreal: her daughter’s marriage begins to fail, and Victor, aka Worst Husband Ever, wants not only to bond with the daughter he left but to win Billie back. Only, he’s got competition: a charming widower might be falling in love with a woman who no longer believes in love. As every romantic notion Billie had pushed away starts pushing back, the Heartbreak Bunny must confront the possibility that, just maybe, love has some tricks left up its sleeve.
“Snap Out of It is a laugh-out-loud delight from start to finish with characters that are drawn with a unique wisdom and insight into human nature. My heart is full, and I am still smiling. I absolutely loved this book.”―Annabel Monaghan, author of Nora Goes Off Script
“Maddie Dawson has a rare ability to craft quirky, offbeat characters that are also utterly believable. Dawson is at the top of her game with Snap Out of It, a magical, wise, tender, joyously relatable read. From the moment Billie the Heartbreak Bunny stepped onto the page, I felt as though I’d met a soulmate.” ―Marie Bostwick, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Restoration of Celia Fairchild
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maddie Dawson is the bestselling author of eleven novels and three non-fiction humor books about parenting. (Well, three of them were bestsellers, anyway.) Maddie was born in the South and thinks the whole country should adopt the word “y’all,” but up in the Northeast, where she now has lived for 40 years, they are putting up resistance to this effort of hers, preferring “youse guys.” www.maddiedawson.com

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.

2023 Festival Day Four
2023-10-29
Eighth Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, October 26-29, 2023
Join Us in the Storied Lowcountry for the 8th Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival on October 26-29, 2023! The Pat Conroy Literary Festival began as Pat Conroy’s 70th birthday celebration in October 2015 and now continues as an annual signature event of the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center. The 8th Annual Conroy Festival will be held on Thursday, October 26, through Sunday, October 29, as a series of free and ticketed events in Beaufort, SC, featuring author discussions, writers workshops, a poetry reading, a screening of the film The Lords of Discipline, and a musical performance. The ribbon cutting for the new Witness Tree Park has been postponed to 2024.
Tickets will be available for all events but the workshops at the door
Presenting writers, poets, and instructors include bestselling authors Ron Rash (The Caretaker), Mary Alice Monroe (The Summer of Lost and Found), Mary Kay Andrews (Bright Lights, Big Christmas), Victoria Benton Frank (My Magnolia Summer), Cassandra King (Tell Me a Story), Homeira Qaderi (Dancing in the Mosque), and Mitchell Zuckoff (The Secret Gate); screenwriter Tom Pope (The Lords of Discipline); Gallery Books executive editor Carrie Feron; poets Jennifer Bartell Boykin (Traveling Mercy), Freya Manfred (When I Was Young and Old), and Tim Conroy (No True Route); English professors and literary scholars Valerie Sayers, Sean Heuston, and Ellen Malphrus; and many more.
October 29 Schedule (click for more information on the Festival website)
12:00 pm TOURS: Pat Conroy Literary Center @ Pat Conroy Literary Center – Free
POSTPONED TO 2024: WITNESS TREE PARK RIBBON CUTTING @ Pat Conroy Literary Center – Free
Festival Website Links:
Events Schedule
Workshops
Festival Facebook Page (where you can watch many author events)
Presenters
The nonprofit Conroy Center is open to the public Thursday through Sunday, noon to 4:00 p.m. (with extended hours during the festival weekend) at 601 Bladen Street in historic downtown Beaufort.

2023 Festival Day Three
2023-10-28
Eighth Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, October 26-29, 2023
Join Us in the Storied Lowcountry for the 8th Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival on October 26-29, 2023! The Pat Conroy Literary Festival began as Pat Conroy’s 70th birthday celebration in October 2015 and now continues as an annual signature event of the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center. The 8th Annual Conroy Festival will be held on Thursday, October 26, through Sunday, October 29, as a series of free and ticketed events in Beaufort, SC, featuring author discussions, writers workshops, a poetry reading, a screening of the film The Lords of Discipline, and a musical performance. The ribbon cutting for the new Witness Tree Park has been postponed to 2024.
Tickets will be available for all events but the workshops at the door
Presenting writers, poets, and instructors include bestselling authors Ron Rash (The Caretaker), Mary Alice Monroe (The Summer of Lost and Found), Mary Kay Andrews (Bright Lights, Big Christmas), Victoria Benton Frank (My Magnolia Summer), Cassandra King (Tell Me a Story), Homeira Qaderi (Dancing in the Mosque), and Mitchell Zuckoff (The Secret Gate); screenwriter Tom Pope (The Lords of Discipline); Gallery Books executive editor Carrie Feron; poets Jennifer Bartell Boykin (Traveling Mercy), Freya Manfred (When I Was Young and Old), and Tim Conroy (No True Route); English professors and literary scholars Valerie Sayers, Sean Heuston, and Ellen Malphrus; and many more.
October 28 Schedule (click for more information on the Festival website)
10:00 am FILM DISCUSSION: The Lords of Discipline @ USC Beaufort Center for the Arts – $10
10:30 am WORKSHOP: Excavating Memory into Poetry Led by Jennifer Bartell Boykin @ Pat Conroy Literary Center – $45
11:15 am AUTHOR EVENT: The Secret Gate: A True Story of Courage and Sacrifice During the Collapse of Afghanistan @ USC Beaufort Center for the Arts – $10
12:00 pm TOURS: Pat Conroy Literary Center @ Pat Conroy Literary Center – Free
2:00 pm AUTHOR EVENT: Homeira Qaderi, author of Dancing in the Mosque @ USC Beaufort Center for the Arts – $10
3:30 pm POETRY PANEL: Why Poetry Matters @ USC Beaufort Center for the Arts – $10
3:30 pm WORKSHOP: Writing a Great Fiction Query Letter Led by Carrie Feron @ Pat Conroy Literary Center – $100
7:00 pm RECEPTION: 2023 Wrap Party @ Pat Conroy Literary Center – $35
Festival Website Links:
Events Schedule
Workshops
Festival Facebook Page (where you can watch many author events)
Presenters
The nonprofit Conroy Center is open to the public Thursday through Sunday, noon to 4:00 p.m. (with extended hours during the festival weekend) at 601 Bladen Street in historic downtown Beaufort.

2023 Festival Day Two
2023-10-27
Eighth Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, October 26-29, 2023
Join Us in the Storied Lowcountry for the 8th Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival on October 26-29, 2023! The Pat Conroy Literary Festival began as Pat Conroy’s 70th birthday celebration in October 2015 and now continues as an annual signature event of the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center. The 8th Annual Conroy Festival will be held on Thursday, October 26, through Sunday, October 29, as a series of free and ticketed events in Beaufort, SC, featuring author discussions, writers workshops, a poetry reading, a screening of the film The Lords of Discipline, and a musical performance. The ribbon cutting for the new Witness Tree Park has been postponed to 2024.
Tickets will be available for all events but the workshops at the door
Presenting writers, poets, and instructors include bestselling authors Ron Rash (The Caretaker), Mary Alice Monroe (The Summer of Lost and Found), Mary Kay Andrews (Bright Lights, Big Christmas), Victoria Benton Frank (My Magnolia Summer), Cassandra King (Tell Me a Story), Homeira Qaderi (Dancing in the Mosque), and Mitchell Zuckoff (The Secret Gate); screenwriter Tom Pope (The Lords of Discipline); Gallery Books executive editor Carrie Feron; poets Jennifer Bartell Boykin (Traveling Mercy), Freya Manfred (When I Was Young and Old), and Tim Conroy (No True Route); English professors and literary scholars Valerie Sayers, Sean Heuston, and Ellen Malphrus; and many more.
October 27 Schedule (click for more information on the Festival website)
9:00 am WORKSHOP: From Bad to Good to Unputdownable Led by Sean A. Scapellato @ Pat Conroy Literary Center – $45
11:00 am AUTHOR EVENT: New York Times best-selling author Ron Rash @ USC Beaufort Center for the Arts – $10
12:00 pm TOURS: Pat Conroy Literary Center @ Pat Conroy Literary Center – Free
12:30 pm WORKSHOP: The Gift of Family Led by Freya Manfred @ Pat Conroy Literary Center – $45
2:00 pm AUTHOR EVENT: Leading Ladies in Southern Fiction @ USC Beaufort Center for the Arts – $10
4:00 pm FILM PANEL: Panel discussion of The Lords of Discipline @ USC Beaufort Center for the Arts – $10
6:00 pm FILM SCREENING: The Lords of Discipline @ USC Beaufort Center for the Arts – $10
Festival Website Links:
Events Schedule
Workshops
Festival Facebook Page (where you can watch many author events)
Presenters
The nonprofit Conroy Center is open to the public Thursday through Sunday, noon to 4:00 p.m. (with extended hours during the festival weekend) at 601 Bladen Street in historic downtown Beaufort.

Pat Conroy Book Club: My Losing Season
2023-10-26 18:30 - 19:30 | The Rhett House Inn, 1009 Craven St., Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Thursday October 26, 2023 – 6:30-7:30 PM EDT
Price: $10
Registration: Register at Eventbrite | Limited to 20 participants
Venue: The Rhett House Inn | 1009 Craven St., Beaufort
Website: Facebook Event Page
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 on fourth Thursdays 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.
Discussions will be held at The Rhett House Inn (1009 Craven St., Beaufort)
SCHEDULE

October 26 (Pat Conroy’s birthday): My Losing Season (2002)
November 30 (5th Thursday due to Thanksgiving): The Pat Conroy Cookbook (2004)

Register at Eventbrite
ABOUT OUR DISCUSSION LEADERS
Dr. Charlene Monahan Spearen received her MFA degree in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric from the University of South Carolina. She is currently serving as the Public Relations and Special Projects Coordinator for Penn Center after a successful career in academia at Allen University. She served as the Program Coordinator for the University of South Carolina’s Arts Institute and was the Assistant Director for the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. In addition to her work throughout the Carolinas, Spearen has been a featured reader and Creative Writing instructor and scholar in County Monaghan and County Mayo, Ireland. She has published a full-length collection of poems titled A Book of Exquisite Disasters. Her poems have appeared in journals and publications throughout the United States.
Jonathan Haupt is the executive director of the nonprofit Conroy Center and the former director of the University of South Carolina Press, where he created the Story River Books fiction imprint with Pat Conroy, named by Garden & Gun magazine as one of “the top ten things to love about the South.” Haupt’s book reviews and author interviews have appeared in the Charleston Post and Courier, Lowcountry Weekly, Beaufort Lifestyle, Savannah Morning News’ Beacon magazine, Southern Review of Books, and Southern Writers Magazine’s Suite T blog. He is co-editor of the anthology Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy, the recipient of seventeen book awards. He serves on the boards of the Friends of South Carolina Libraries and the South Carolina Academy of Authors. In 2020, Haupt was recognized with the Doug Marlette Literacy Leadership Award presented by the Pulpwood Queens, the largest book club in the U.S.

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.

2023 Festival Day One
2023-10-26
Eighth Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, October 26-29, 2023
Join Us in the Storied Lowcountry for the 8th Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival on October 26-29, 2023! The Pat Conroy Literary Festival began as Pat Conroy’s 70th birthday celebration in October 2015 and now continues as an annual signature event of the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center. The 8th Annual Conroy Festival will be held on Thursday, October 26, through Sunday, October 29, as a series of free and ticketed events in Beaufort, SC, featuring author discussions, writers workshops, a poetry reading, a screening of the film The Lords of Discipline, and a musical performance. The ribbon cutting for the new Witness Tree Park has been postponed to 2024.
Tickets will be available for all events but the workshops at the door
Presenting writers, poets, and instructors include bestselling authors Ron Rash (The Caretaker), Mary Alice Monroe (The Summer of Lost and Found), Mary Kay Andrews (Bright Lights, Big Christmas), Victoria Benton Frank (My Magnolia Summer), Cassandra King (Tell Me a Story), Homeira Qaderi (Dancing in the Mosque), and Mitchell Zuckoff (The Secret Gate); screenwriter Tom Pope (The Lords of Discipline); Gallery Books executive editor Carrie Feron; poets Jennifer Bartell Boykin (Traveling Mercy), Freya Manfred (When I Was Young and Old), and Tim Conroy (No True Route); English professors and literary scholars Valerie Sayers, Sean Heuston, and Ellen Malphrus; and many more.
October 26 Schedule (click for more information on the Festival website)
12:00 pm TOURS: Pat Conroy Literary Center @ Pat Conroy Literary Center – Free
2:00 pm WORKSHOP: Say What? A Playful Dialogue Workshop Led by Valerie Sayers @ Pat Conroy Literary Center – $45

6:30 pm BOOK CLUB: My Losing Season @ Rhett House Inn – $10
Festival Website Links:
Events Schedule
Workshops
Festival Facebook Page (where you can watch many author events)
Presenters
The nonprofit Conroy Center is open to the public Thursday through Sunday, noon to 4:00 p.m. (with extended hours during the festival weekend) at 601 Bladen Street in historic downtown Beaufort.

Book Launch: No True Route with Tim Conroy
2023-10-25 17:00 - 19:00 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Wednesday October 25, 2023 – 5:00-7:00 PM EDT
Price: Free public drop-in event
Registration: No advance registration needed
Venue: Pat Conroy Literary Center | 601 Bladen St., Beaufort
Website: Facebook Event Page
The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center is honored to host a free public drop-in launch event for poet Tim Conroy’s second book, No True Route. Join us on Wednesday, October 25, 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. Conroy will read from his new book of poetry at 5:30 p.m.
About No True Route
“The title of Tim Conroy’s second book, No True Route, asks us to think about journeys in both time and space. And, for sure, there are poems throughout the book taking up the themes of movement, direction, detour, destination. These are poems by a man looking back over his life—those landscapes of time and family and loss—and thinking about how he got here. What were the signposts? Where could his life have taken another direction? What then? Who would he have been? Not this man, certainly. Another, perhaps harder, or lost, and not a writer. Don’t we all think about the choices we made or failed to make, the inheritances we rejected and those we kept, like a mother’s jar of seashells on a bookshelf, a slight thing, a thing weighted with memory, and inevitabilities?
“Yet, I’m struck by a theme of sustenance that threads the book—a mother packing her children’s lunches, a joke between spouses about a soup of nothing, coastal meals of crab and shrimp, a bag of chips that rivets a dog’s attention. Or dreams that will be eaten. Rainwater in chalices. Surely that is another way to think about our lives: the things and people that have sustained us, fed us, kept us going. And surely that is another way to think about poetry like this. Something to chew on. Something that can keep us going. Words that sustain.”–Ed Madden, former Poet Laureate of Columbia, S.C., from the preface
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author of the collections A Theology of Terrain and No True Route (forthcoming in October), Tim Conroy is a poet and former educator. His work has appeared in Fall Lines, Jasper Magazine, Marked by the Water, Sheltered, Twelve Mile Review, Poetry on the Comet, The Post and Courier, Ukweli: Searching for Healing Truth, and Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy. In 2022, he received the Broad River Prize for prose from Fall Lines, Volume IX.
A founding board member of the Pat Conroy Literary Center established in his brother’s honor, Tim, and his wife Terrye, live in Dunedin, Florida.

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.
