Explore Beaufort SC Community Event Calendar
Sponsored By
- This event has passed.
I Was Born to Be in a Library: Pat Conroy’s Great Love of Libraries
November 5, 2022 @ 7:00 am
“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 literature of the Lowcountry. Pat Conroy Literary Center executive director Jonathan Haupt 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Through video and audio clips, photographs, and published and unpublished writings by and about Conroy, this presentation welcomes attendees into the book-filled world of one of America’s most beloved writers.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.
Free and open to the public, this special event will be held at the Darlington County Library (204 N. Main St., Darlington, SC) on Saturday, November 5, at 11:00 a.m. The program is hosted by the Darlington County Library System and sponsored by South Carolina Humanities, a not-for-profit organization inspiring, engaging and enriching South Carolinians with programs on literature, history, culture and heritage.
About our presenter:
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.
