Porch Talk

“I think the Center is on a path to pull together all these disparate literary forces that have been going on for years and years here. Not just writers, but readers and people in the book industry on every level….”

To Pat Conroy, he was that Will Balk. When not answering questions from visitors at the Pat Conroy Literary Center, William “Will” Balk Jr., who serves on the center’s advisory council, also writes a garden column for Lowcountry […]

Pat Conroy and Cassandra King, photo by Rob McDonald

Cassandra King and Jonathan Haupt will speak about “A Generous Lowcountry Heart: Building on the Legacy of Pat Conroy” at First Presbyterian Church on Hilton Head Island on Wednesday, April 26th.  Free and open the public, this program will begin at 6:30 pm. An optional dinner will be served at 5:30 pm for a cost of $10. (Dinner reservations are required by 5:00 pm on Tuesday, April 25th; please call 843-681-3696.) First […]

Welcome our friend and Lowcountry neighbor to the Porch: poet, teacher, and novelist Ellen Malphrus.  The last I saw Ellen was at the sad occasion of Pat’s last days, where she and her husband Andy not only provided emotional support and loving presence, but an unending supply of succulent Peruvian chicken from Andy’s forthcoming restaurant (Andes Rotisserie) in Bluffton. As any southerner will tell you, the woman who brings the best food to a crisis is a Woman […]

Bren McClain is a writer who never gave up, a former journalist turned award-winning fiction writer. Her first novel, One Good Mama Bone, was recently published by Story River Books, Pat Conroy’s original southern fiction imprint with USC Press. McClain sat down with me to talk about farm life, writing, and a secret that would stay with her for many years before becoming the seed for her first novel.

This interview has been edited for length.

Mindy Lucas: Welcome to Porch […]

I was in Beaufort last week, for the first time since Pat’s death just on the edge of Spring a year ago, on March 4^th.

There is something so particularly cruel about losing someone on the edge of Spring in the lowcountry, when the winter gray of the marsh and Spanish moss is just on the verge of the photo flash of color and glorious life that comes with the bloom of all the old southern scene-stealers: dogwood, […]