Pulitzer Prize winner to headline 2021 literary festival in Beaufort County
A Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and other writers will headline this year’s Pat Conroy Literary Festival in Beaufort County.
Robert Olen Butler, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993 with his short story collection “A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain,” will speak about his new novel “Late City” during a virtual Nov. 6 discussion with author Bren McClain. The event, now in its sixth year, will be live streamed on the festival’s Facebook page.
The annual festival began as author Pat Conroy’s 70th birthday celebration in 2015. Conroy, who died in 2016 and lived in Beaufort, wrote acclaimed novels such as “The Prince of Tides.”
This year’s festival is split between in-person and virtual events from Nov. 4 to 7. Most events are free and writing workshops typically cost $45 to attend. The discussion with Butler is free.
The author events are held across Beaufort County, including at the Coastal Discovery Museum on Hilton Head Island. The festival is run by the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center.
Along with Butler, other headliners include: Ashley M. Jones, Alabama’s youngest and first Black Poet Laureate (“Reparations Now!”); literary activist and morning radio show host E. Ethelbert Miller (“When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories”); best-selling writers Patti Callahan (“Once Upon a Wardrobe”), Wiley Cash (“When Ghosts Come Home”) and Brian Panowich (“Hard Cash Valley”); award-winning photographer Andrew Feiler (“A Better Life for Their Children”); and the Carrie McCray Nickens Poetry Fellowship winner Elizabeth Robin (“Where Green Meets Blue”), among others.
The festival’s full schedule can be found online at bit.ly/PatConroyFestival.
This story was originally published October 16, 2021 at 10:51 AM.
