Four award-winning novelists will read from and discuss their work at the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center (601 Bladen St., Beaufort) on Saturday, January 21, at 5:00 p.m. The Conroy Center is honored to host Mindy Friddle, author of Secret Keepers and The Garden Angel; Rebecca T. Godwin, author of Keeper of the House and Private Parts; J.C. Sasser, author of Gradle Bird; and Michel Stone, author of The Iguana Tree and Border Child. This author event is free and open to the public. Books will be available for sale and signing. Seating is limited; please call 843-379-7025 to reserve in advance.

Prior to the public reading, the quartet of novelists will also lead a ticketed writers workshop, Creating Your Writing Practice, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. To learn more and register for the writing workshop, visit https://patconroyliterarycenter.eventbrite.com.

Mindy Friddle

Mindy Friddle is the author of Secret Keepers (winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction) and The Garden Angel (a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection). She is a two-time winner of the South Carolina Fiction Prize and the recipient of writing fellowships from the South Carolina Arts Commission and Sewanee Writers Conference. Her third novel, Her Best Self, is forthcoming in 2024. She lives and writes on Edisto Island.

Rebecca Godwin

Rebecca T. Godwin has just been awarded the South Carolina Arts Commission’s Prose Fellowship for 2023. She is the author of two novels, Keeper of the House and Private Parts. Her work has appeared in Paris Review, Oxford American, The Sun, Epoch, South Carolina Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She received MacDowell and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in the early 2000s. She has recently completed a collection of linked stories. She lives and writes on Edisto Island.

Born and raised in Metter, Georgia, J.C. Sasser has worked as an envelope licker,

J.C. Sasser

tortoise tagger, lifeguard, Senate page, model, editor, water-polo coach, marine biologist, plant grower, software consultant, and 6-Sigma Black Belt. She is the award-winning author of the novel Gradle Bird, and her short stories have been published in multiple anthologies. She currently lives in the South Georgia woods in a WWII

Michele Stone

barracks with her family.

Writer, educator, and community volunteer, Michel Stone is the author of the novels Border Child and The Iguana Tree, both optioned for film. She is the winner of the Mary Frances Hobson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters, the Patricia Winn Award for Southern Literature, and the South Carolina Fiction Award. Michel is a past board chair of the Hub City Writers Project in Spartanburg, SC.

Learn more about the Conroy Center at www.patconroyliterarycenter.org.