Alabama Book Festival – Old Alabama Town – Montgomery, AL

Featuring the remembrances of a pantheon of 67 writers who were inspired, championed, and befriended by the late Pat Conroy (1945-2016), the anthology Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy celebrates the lasting literary legacy of one of America’s best loved storytellers. At the 2019 Alabama Book Festival, co-editor and Pat Conroy Literary Center executive director Jonathan Haupt will moderate a lively discussion among fellow “scribes” Anthony Grooms and Patti Callahan Henry, as they share their favorite Conroy stories from the collection. A book signing will follow the discussion. Sales of Our Prince of Scribes support the educational mission of the non-profit Pat Conroy Literary Center.

Full festival schedule: www.alabamabookfestival.org

Praise for “OUR PRINCE OF SCRIBES”

“His wound may have been geography, but his legacy was generosity. That’s the takeaway from this new collection of essays honoring the late Pat Conroy… A fitting tribute to a unique, significant writer and man.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A testament to his mentorship and passion for educating others, the book includes essays from more than sixty writers, including Rick Bragg, Nikky Finney, Mary Alice Monroe, Ron Rash, and Sallie Ann Robinson, one of Conroy’s former students on Daufuskie Island. It’s a moving tribute to the legacy of one of the South’s brightest lights.”–Garden & Gun’s Talk of the South

“Pat Conroy’s death in 2016 left a colossal void in the literary landscape, but his spirit survives not only in the legacy of his work but in new books like this collection of funny, bittersweet recollections by those who knew him.”–Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Website: Facebook Event Page

About our presenters:

Anthony Grooms’s latest novel, The Vain Conversation, was selected by Pat Conroy for his Story River Books imprint for publication in spring 2018. Like much of Grooms’s fiction, The Vain Conversation explores the complexity of race relations in the South during the Jim Crow years. His novel Bombingham, set against the civil rights movement, is often taught in high schools and colleges. It was a Washington Post notable book and was chosen as a citywide common read for Washington, D.C. His collection of short stories, Trouble No More, likewise has been widely adopted by teachers. Grooms has twice won the Lillian Smith Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Foundation Award. He holds fellowships from Yaddo, Bread Loaf, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Fulbright.

Jonathan Haupt is the executive director of the Pat Conroy Literary Center, the founding director of the annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, and the former director of the University of South Carolina Press. He serves on the boards of the South Carolina Academy of Authors and the Friends of South Carolina Libraries and on the advisory board of the South Carolina Humanities and the affiliates steering committee of the American Writers Museum. Haupt’s book reviews and author interviews have appeared in the Charleston Post and Courier; Lowcountry Weekly; Fall Lines; Shrimp, Collards & Grits magazine; and the Conroy Center’s Porch Talk blog.

Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of more than a dozen novels, including her most recent, Becoming Mrs. Lewis and The Bookshop at Water’s End. A finalist in the Townsend Prize for Fiction, an Indie Next Pick and Okra pick, and a multiple nominee for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Novel of the Year, she now lives in both Mountain Brook, Alabama, and Bluffton, South Carolina, with her husband.