I Was Born to Be in a Library: Pat Conroy’s Great Love of Libraries w/ Jonathan Haupt & Alisha Arora

“A library could show you everything, if you knew where to look.”—Pat Conroy, My Reading Life

The author of “The Prince of Tides,” “The Great Santini” and “The Water Is Wide,” Pat Conroy (1945–2016) is synonymous with the Lowcountry. Pat Conroy Literary Center executive director Jonathan Haupt and intern Alisha Arora will discuss Conroy’s lifelong love of books and libraries—focusing on the roles public libraries, school libraries, and Pat’s own personal library played in his writing life. Through video and audio clips, photographs, and published and unpublished writings by and about Conroy, this presentation welcomes attendees into the book-filled world of one of America’s most beloved writers.

This program also includes an overview of the Pat Conroy Literary Center which honors and continues Conroy’s legacy as writer and educator in his adopted hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina. www.patconroyliterarycenter.org

Free and open to the public, this special event will be held at the Bluffton Branch Library (120 Palmetto Way) on Tuesday, May 10, at 4:30 p.m.

About Our Presenters

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.

Beaufort County Library volunteer and Beaufort High School senior Alisha Arora is vice president of the BHS chapter of the National Honor Society and a board member of DAYLO: Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization. An accomplished AP and Honors student in numerous STEM courses, with an emphasis on the biological sciences, she is the recipient of Academic Excellent Awards. Arora is also a competitive dancer and captain of the BHS Girls Varsity Tennis Team, and she teaches younger peers in summer tennis camps and at her dance studio.