Pat Conroy Literary Festival Goes Virtual, November 5–8
Live-streamed Author Programs, Online Writers Workshops, Virtual Tour & Art Exhibition
The annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival began as Pat Conroy’s 70th birthday celebration in October 2015. Hosted by the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center, this year’s festival will be held as a series live-streamed author presentations and panel discussions, online writing workshops, exhibits, and virtual tours on November 5-8. The 2020 festival will be highlighted by appearances by Brad Taylor, former Special Forces officer and now New York Times best-selling author of the Pike Logan thriller series; Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award-winning artist Mary Whyte, author of We the People: Portraits of Veterans in America; and, from A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-One Writers of Color on the New American South, editor Cinelle Barnes and contributing writers Latria Graham and Gary Jackson.
Registration is now open through the festival’s Facebook page (Facebook.com/PatConroyFestival), website (PatConroyLiteraryFestival.org), and—for workshops—Eventbrite page (PatConroyLiteraryCenter.Eventbrite.com).
The Pat Conroy Literary Festival is made possible by the generous support of the Estate of Robert S. Handler and is presented in partnership with ETV Lowcountry, the Crescendo arts festival of Hilton Head Island, the University of South Carolina Beaufort, the Beaufort chapter of the South Carolina Writers Association, the Friends of South Carolina Libraries, the National Association of Women Artists, and the Coastal Discovery Museum of Hilton Head Island.
Also scheduled to appear: student writers from the Conroy Center’s Camp Conroy and the Ann Head Literary Prize for Short Fiction at Beaufort High School; South Carolina Academy of Authors honorees Pam Durban, Andrew Geyer, and Beaufort native Valerie Sayers; poets Emily Davis-Fletcher, Gary Jackson, Len Lawson, and Elizabeth Robin; novelists Stephanie Austin Edwards, Dana Ridenour, Dorothy St. James, Rebecca Dwight Bruff, Joe Palmer, and Susan Diamond Riley; memoirist and travel writer Donna Keel Armer; ETV Lowcountry director and By the River host Holly Jackson, USC Beaufort writer-in-residence Ellen Malphrus; and Conroy Center staff members Jonathan Haupt, Brooke McKinney, and Holland Perryman.
The Literary Festival will also feature a half-dozen online workshops for writers of all levels of experience, led by Pam Durban, Connie May Fowler, Andrew Geyer, Len Lawson, Valerie Sayers, and Dorothy St. James; and the Pat Conroy-inspired Small Chapters exhibition of original artwork crafted by members of the National Association of Women Artists, on display from October 15 through the end of November at the Coastal Discovery Museum of Hilton Head Island.
The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center is open to the public noon to 4:00 p.m. Thursday through Sunday at 905 Port Republic Street in historic downtown Beaufort. The Conroy Center is South Carolina’s first affiliate of the American Writers Museum, second American Library Association Literary Landmark, and Tripadvisor’s top-rated destination in Beaufort. Learn more at PatConroyLiteraryCenter.org.
