Pat Conroy Literary Festival

Friday morning Lindee & Addie got here as soon as they finished up celebrating Mallory and Clara at the Principal’s Scholar breakfast at the middle school, and we hit the road for Beaufort.  It was our annual birthday trip for Lindee and me, and Addie joined us this year.  It was such a great weekend.  We stopped to pick up our passes and met the booksellers, went & checked in our motel, and then headed to town to check out the Pat Conroy Literary Center.  Lindee and I had learned when we went to the I Was Born to Be in a Library program about Pat Conroy a couple of months ago that he wrote all of his books by hand.  Here are the first few pages of his first draft of Prince of Tides.  Very cool.

This year was a celebration of the publication of the new book of tributes to Pat Conroy from various authors, The Prince of Scribes. Friday night was a dinner where we sat at the table with authors who are featured in the books, and afterwards we were able to get books signed by writers who were there. This is Pat’s brother Tim, who is a poet. That was very cool. Next to him is Debbi Covington, who writes cookbooks, and then Walter Edgar, who was at our table for dinner. He is a big – HUGE – expert on SC history, and we love listening to his program on NPR. Such a special evening.