Pat Conroy Literary Center

Pat Conroy Book Club: The Great Santini
2023-06-22 18:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | The Rhett House Inn, 1009 Craven St., Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Thursday June 22, 2023 – 6:30 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

April 27: The Boo (1970)
May 25 The Water Is Wide (1972)
June 22: The Great Santini (1976)
July 27: The Lords of Discipline (1980)

Future discussion dates will be announced this summer, once the book club is underway.
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.

Camp Conroy: Summer Camp for Young Writers & Artists 2023
2023-06-12 09:00 - 2023-06-23 16:00 | Beaufort Middle School, 2501 Mossy Oaks Rd., Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
REGISTRATION: Eventbrite
Camp Conroy is a two-week day camp build-a-book experience for young writers and artists, ages 8 to 14. Participants will create independently and collaboratively as they research, write, illustrate, edit, design, and ultimately publish a book together.
The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center’s 6th annual Camp Conroy will be held June 12 to 23, Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (Drop-off and pick-up hours are between 8:00-9:00 a.m. and 3:30-4:00 p.m.), with a closing reading to be held on Friday afternoon, June 23. Presented in partnership with Beaufort Middle School, the camp will creatively explore this year’s theme, “When we find ourselves on a voyage exploring the unknown, we discover extraordinary adventures leading to the most bountiful treasures.”
During the first week of the camp, we invite our campers to immerse themselves in creative exploration as they respond to our theme. In the second week, campers refine their stories, essays, poems, artwork, and photography as they build their anthology together. Participants also constructively critique one another’s work, forming thematic connections as they combine their selected works into a cohesive, collaborative publication.
Camp Conroy invites diversity and inclusivity among our campers with respect to race, religion, ability, and all other aspects of identity.
Camp Conroy 2023 Theme: When we find ourselves on a voyage exploring the unknown, we discover extraordinary adventures leading to the most bountiful treasures.
The $300 registration fee for Camp Conroy includes two weeks of instruction, camp activities, and healthy daily snacks. Students must bring their own lunches and drinks each day. (This is a day camp; overnight lodging and meals are not included.) After the camp, participants will each receive a copy of their published anthology. Registration closes on May 15.
In the 2004 Pat Conroy Cookbook, Pat describes his “Bill Dufford Summer” spent between his junior and senior years on the campus of Beaufort High School (what is now Beaufort Middle School, the site of last year’s Camp Conroy). It was a transformative summer for Pat and for his principal, mentor, and surrogate father figure, Bill Dufford. As Pat writes at the end of his recollection, “I had everything—the best summer of my life.” That has been and remains the goal of our Camp Conroy, to give our campers the best summers of their lives. We hope you will join us this year.
Applying for a Scholarship: A limited number of full and partial scholarships are available, including a scholarship established in memory of Maura Connelly, an instructor in our original Camp Conroy. To apply, interested students should submit a sample of their work (story, essay, poem, artwork, or photography) with a brief letter about their interest in the Camp Conroy experience by May 15, to the Pat Conroy Literary Center, Attention: Camp Conroy, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC 29902. Scholarship recipients will be contacted in early June.
Sponsoring a Scholarship: Tax-deductible donations to the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center are most welcome to sponsor student scholarships or a visiting instructor for Camp Conroy. See the camp registration link for details.
Questions: Email us at campconroysc@gmail.com.
MEET OUR INSTRUCTORS
Lisa Anne Cullen is an author, illustrator, and artist. Her most recent books are the Carolina folktales Little Orange Honey Hood, Three Wild Pigs (University of South Carolina Press/Young Palmetto Books) and Haskell & Greta (Quantum 8 Press). She is a member of the National Association of Women Artists, Seacoast Artists Guild, Seacoast Artist’s Guild & Gallery Writer’s Group, and teaches art and illustration. She holds an MFA in writing for children.

Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2019 & 2023), Miho Kinnas is a Japanese poet and translator. Two collections of poetry, Today, Fish Only (2014) and Move Over, Bird (2019) were published by Math Paper Press. We Eclipse Into the Other Side, co-written with E. Ethelbert Miller, will be released from Pinyong Publishing in summer, 2023. Elaine Equi chose her poem, “Three Shrimp Boats Over the Horizon” (Wet Cement Press Magazine) for The Best American Poetry 2023.

Maddy Roth is a third grade teacher at Lady’s Island Elementary School. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Elementary and Early Childhood Education with a minor in Special Education from Pennsylvania State University in the spring of 2021. She also runs a competitive gymnastics program at The Foundry in Beaufort and coaches JV Cheerleading at Beaufort High School.

Jonathan Haupt is the executive director of the Pat Conroy Literary Center, the former director of the University of South Carolina Press, and co-editor of Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy, winner of 17 book awards. In 2020, he was awarded the Doug Marlette Literacy Leadership Award 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.

June 2023 Open Mic Night
2023-06-08 18:00 - 19:30 | Sandies, 711 Bladen St., Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
In partnership with the South Carolina Writers Association and the Beaufort County Black Chamber of Commerce, the Conroy Center’s monthly Open Mic Night will be held at Sandies (711 Bladen St.) on Thursday, June 8, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Our featured writer is poet Helen P. Bradley, author of the novel Breach of Trust, forthcoming in May 2023.
When: Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 6 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Price: Free · Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Where: Sandies (711 Bladen St.)
Interested in reading as part of Open Mic? Let us know at contact@patconroyliterarycenter.org
We want to build our community of writers and an appreciation for the art and talent of new, emerging, and long-time writers. Thank you for supporting this partnership!
Event Facebook Page
About our featured writer:
Helen P. Bradley’s debut novel Breach of Trust draws from her experiences during twenty-seven years heading a nationally-recognized crime victim advocacy program. A former newspaper journalist, Helen has written curricula, essays, and articles for the National Organization for Victim Assistance, the National Center for Victims of Crime, and the Georgia Victim Assistance Academy. Her writing has been published in The Savannah Anthology, Savannah Magazine, The Savannah Morning News, and Law Enforcement Magazine. She volunteered for 10 years with Deep Center, a Savannah youth literacy program that won a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts award.
In August 2022, Helen won first place in a national essay contest out of a field of 55 entries. NextTribe, the “voice of women aging boldly,” sponsored the contest in which Helen’s essay, “From High Heels to Hot Wheels,” reveals how she unexpectedly became a first-time mom at the age of 52, when her husband’s two-year-old grandson came to live with them. Learn more at www.helenpbradley.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.

Workshop: Two-Sentence Elevator Pitch with Ann Garvin
2023-06-01 18:00 - 20:00 | Online – ZOOM
UPDATE: This workshop has been rescheduled to Thursday June 1, 2023 6:00-8:00 p.m. EDT
Register: patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
Cost: $45
Limited to 15 participants (A minimum of ten participants is needed for this workshop.)
Online: Zoom
When an agent or editor asks, “What’s your book about?” will your brief description (your logline) capture their interest? Will they ask for more? Will they see you as a skilled professional or an eager newbie who isn’t quite sure what they are doing?
Even the most skilled authors find distilling their book down to a compelling pitch difficult to do, not because they don’t know what their book is about, but because they do. In fact, they know it so well that they don’t want to leave anything out. This results in more of a summary than juicy marketing copy designed to hook and interest an agent or a publisher.
In this virtual workshop led by USA Today bestselling novelist and Tall Poppy Writers founder Ann Garvin, you will learn how to get to the very heart of your project and make certain that the story you’re working on is compelling and clear. Even the most complicated or quiet of tales can be pitched in such a way that people will sit up and take notice.
Tuesday, May 9, 6:00-8:00 p.m. on Zoom. Limited to 15 participants. $45/person.
Learn more and register at https://patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com
This 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.
Website: Facebook Event Page
About our instructor:
Ann Garvin, PhD, is the USA Today bestselling author of five funny and sad novels about people who do too much, in a world that asks too much from them. Her forthcoming novel, There’s No Coming Back From This, will be published this August. Ann teaches in the low-residency master of fine arts program at Drexel University and lives in Wisconsin with her anxious and overly protective dog, Peanut. She is the founder of the Tall Poppy Writers and is dedicated to helping authors find readers and vice versa. For more information visit www.anngarvin.net.

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 Kristen Ness
2023-05-26 17:30 - 18:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Friday May 26, 2023 – 5:30-6:30 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 Kristen Ness, author of the debut novel At Loggerheads, on Friday, May 26, at 5:30 p.m. Free and open to the public, this special author event will be held at the Conroy Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort. Books will be available for sale and signing. Seating is limited; please call 843-379-7025 to reserve in advance.
“Kristen Ness’s At Loggerheads is a thrilling debut novel intertwined with mystery, nature, romance, and betrayal. Set on a lush barrier island, Ness offers the reader a rich sense of place in a whodunit that reflects on the meaning of home.”—New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe
About At Loggerheads
Brooke Edens, a scientist who studies loggerhead sea turtles, has longed for a sense of home and belonging ever since her return to Anders Isle. But something is amiss on the Lowcountry island where she grew up. For years, loggerheads have been disappearing from the beach and development has been encroaching on the island’s natural beauty and maritime forest.
When a dead body is found on the same day as a mutilated loggerhead, Brooke uses clues from her knowledge of sea turtles to help Detective Drew Young, her closest friend and potential love interest, investigate the many big crimes beginning to surface on their small island. Brooke’s life is further complicated by her ex-fiancé, Charlotte-based attorney Caldwell Madden, who appears on the island for a work trip and to support the presidential campaign of his father, a US Senator.
More than just a whodunit, this murder mystery includes romance, nature, politics, real estate, and science. With a captivating sense of place, the story unfolds as a love letter to the barrier islands and coastal towns of the South Carolina Lowcountry, where the often-opposing forces of mother nature and human nature influence what people will do for money, for power, and for love. Amid the many revelations, betrayals, and twists that threaten to pull Brooke and Drew apart, will they be able to untangle the web of crimes, catch the murderer and, ultimately, find a way back to each other?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kristen Ness grew up mostly in South Carolina, spending countless days with nature and falling in love with the ocean and its creatures on Isle of Palms, where she walks the beach at sunrise each summer in search of sea turtle nests as a volunteer for the Island Turtle Team.
While practicing immigration law for the past twenty years, Kristen has been moonlighting in pursuit of her lifelong passion for writing and her obsession with marine biology. Writing, real estate, politics, and even publishing run in her blood as the daughter of an English teacher and a land developer, and the great-granddaughter of the 14th Governor of North Dakota whose family owned and published The Bismarck Tribune. She has a BA in English from Duke University, a JD from the University of South Carolina School of Law, and serves as an appointed member of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Coral Advisory Panel.
Kristen lives in Charleston, SC, with her husband, their two children, two guinea pigs, and a cat. At Loggerheads is her first novel. https://kristenness.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 Water is Wide
2023-05-25 18:30 - 20:30 | The Rhett House Inn, 1009 Craven St., Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Thursday May 25, 2023 – 6:30 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

April 27: The Boo (1970)
May 25 The Water Is Wide (1972)
June 22: The Great Santini (1976)
July 27: The Lords of Discipline (1980)

Future discussion dates will be announced this summer, once the book club is underway.
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.

Book Launch: Rainbow Warrior with Jacquelyn Markham
2023-05-18 17:30 - 19:30 | Pat Conroy Literary Center, 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902, United States
Thursday May 18, 2023 – 5:30-7:30 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 public launch event for Jacquelyn Markham’s new collection of poetry, Rainbow Warrior, on Thursday, May 18, from 5:30 to 7:30 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 give a reading from her new book at 6:30 p.m.
About Rainbow Warrior
The powerful poems in Rainbow Warrior make connections between the lives of the islanders of the South Pacific impacted by nuclear testing on Bikini and nearby islands and the Deep Water Horizon oil spill that devastated land and sea off the coast of Louisiana. The poems in this collection—some narrative, some epic, some lyrical—delve into ecopoetics to reveal the human toll of environmental disasters.
Images of the lone Ivory Billed Woodpecker, now extinct, juxtaposed with a child listening to the “Mother of the Sea” chant from a spiral shell, or fledglings the “size of pennies/…copper in the sun” make everyday moments of healing and beauty in nature even more poignant. These poems that follow the moon and the tides strike awe in our hearts and move us toward a deeper social consciousness.
“Jacquelyn Markham’s dedication of Rainbow Warrior to Rachel Carson prepares us for the power of this collection. Each of the ten poems gives us not only an insightful appreciation of nature but an awareness of its fragility in the lives of humans who too often view themselves as ‘gods’ in relation to it, enjoying what they will without understanding they are destroying it. Drawing from indigenous lore, and imagining the voices of the people directly affected, Markham—as though herself listening to the spirit of the sea in a spiral shell, as though heartfully calling on sky power—expresses outrage and terror in the dark necessary reminder that warfare’s bombs and greed’s oil drilling have poisoned our Earth. ‘I plunge into the water trying/yet I wonder will we survive?’ epitomizes the spirit of this strong sequence compelling in silent reading and superbly ready to be performed aloud by many voices.”–Katharyn Howd Machan, author of Dark Side of the Spoon and other collections
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Jacquelyn Markham has loved poetry since wandering through the meadow along a mint-lined brook as a child in rural Michigan. She has written poetry for nearly as long, so as a freshman in college, she decided to make a career of it. After earning her bachelor’s degree in English, she earned a master’s and a doctorate in English and Creative Writing from Florida State University.
Author of two chapbooks and a personal mythology, Peering Into the Iris: An Ancestral Journey, she has published nationally and internationally in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Archive: South Carolina Poetry Since 2005, Adrienne Rich: A Tribute Anthology, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Lullwater Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, The High Window, and Woman and Earth, among others.
Dr. Markham enjoyed a rich academic career from which she retired as a full professor. During her academic career, her love of poetry extended to scholarship as she “rescued” 19th century women poets who had fallen into obscurity, focusing on collecting the far-flung poems published by Charlotte Perkins Gilman during her lifetime. The result is the award-winning reference The Complete Poetry of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1884-1935, Together with Commentary and Notes (Mellen Press, 2014), recipient of the Adele Mellen Prize “for its distinguished contribution to scholarship.” She currently mentors poets and writers, making her home 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.

May 2023 Open Mic Night
2023-05-11 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 May is Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, author of the debut novel Even As We Breathe, winner of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. 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, May 11, 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:
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, resides in Qualla, NC. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary.
Her debut novel, Even As We Breathe (UPK 2020), was a finalist for the Weatherford Award, named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020, and received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award (2021). It also is the first novel published by a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. Clapsaddle’s work appears in Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, Our State Magazine, and The Atlantic. She is a former secondary English and Cherokee Studies educator. Currently, Clapsaddle is an editor for the Appalachian Futures Series (UPK), serves on the Board of Directors for the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, and is the President of the Board of Trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network. www.asaunookeclapsaddle.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.
