Pat Conroy Literary Center – Beaufort, SC

Beginning in April 2019, the Pat Conroy Literary Center Book Club will read and discuss all twelve of Pat Conroy’s published memoirs and novels in order of publication. Each monthly session will be led by a guest discussion leader and held at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. These events are free, but advance registration is required and seating is limited. Participants are asked to read the books before the meetings and to come prepared for discussion.

The second Pat Conroy Book Club meeting will be led by USC Beaufort English professor Mollie Barnes as we discuss Conroy’s The Water Is Wide, published in 1972 and twice adapted for film.

Please register here: www.brownpapertickets.com/producer/2564858

Website: Facebook Event Page

About THE WATER IS WIDE

Though the children of Yamacraw (Daufuskie) Island live less than two miles from the southern mainland, they can’t name the US president or the ocean that surrounds them. Most can’t read or write. Many of the students are the descendants of slaves, handicapped by poverty and isolation. When Pat Conroy arrives, an eager young teacher at the height of the civil rights movement, he finds a community still bound by the bitter effects of racism, but he is determined to broaden its members’ horizons and give them a voice.

In this poignant memoir, which Newsweek called “an experience of joy,” the New York Times–bestselling author of The Prince of Tides plumbs his experiences as a young teacher on an isolated South Carolina island to reveal the shocking inequalities of the American education system.

About Mollie Barnes

Mollie Barnes is an assistant professor of English at the University of South Carolina Beaufort, which was proud to celebrate The Water is Wide as the inaugural selection of its First-Year Reading Experience Program (2016–2017). Barnes works on nineteenth-century American literature, with a focus on social reform. She has published on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Fanny Kemble, Edith Wharton, and Margaret Fuller (forthcoming). Her current book project studies “problem texts” by Anglo-American expatriates in Italy.

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.