The Beaufort-based nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center has now expanded its reach with a new monthly author interview radio show on the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network and available through all major podcast apps and websites, including blogtalkradio.com and soundcloud.com.
“Live from the Pat Conroy Literary Center,” hosted by the Conroy Center’s executive director Jonathan Haupt, debuted on April 22 with an interview with Tim Conroy, retired educator, author of the poetry collection Theologies of Terrain, and a founding board member of the literary center established in his brother’s honor.
The interview aired live on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and during National Library Week and National Poetry Month, each in turn becoming an avenue into the forty-five-minute conversation between Haupt and Conroy.
The overarching theme of this first episode of the Conroy Center’s new show was one of optimism, that a writing life can begin for someone at any time and that it is never too late to say the “great yes” to one’s artistic calling. Haupt’s interview with Conroy can be heard in full at https://soundcloud.com/authorsontheair.
“Live from the Pat Conroy Literary Center” is a gift to the Conroy Center from Authors on the Air host and producer Pam Stack, who interviewed Haupt about the award-winning anthology Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy on her show on February 26. Stack was so moved by their conversation she offered Haupt his own radio show during their on-air discussion.
Summer guest authors on the Conroy Center’s interview program will include a trio of novelists: Kathleen M. Rodgers, award-winning author of the newly published The Flying Cutterbucks (June 25, 7:00 p.m.), two-time Lillian Smith Book Award winner and finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction Anthony Grooms, author of The Vain Conversation (July 22, 7:00 p.m.), and Haupt’s high school classmate Laura Trentham, author of the military family-themed Heart of a Hero series and more than 20 historical and contemporary romance novels (August 19, 7:00 p.m.). The podcast interviews will also be shared through the Conroy Center’s social media and email newsletter.
“Live from the Pat Conroy Literary Center” host 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, Pink magazine, Southern Review of Books, and Southern Writers Magazine’s Suite T blog. He is co-editor with Nicole Seitz of the anthology Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy, the recipient of a dozen book awards. An associate producer of the SCETV author interview program By the River, Haupt also serves on the boards of the South Carolina Academy of Authors and the Friends of South Carolina Libraries and on the advisory board of the South Carolina Humanities and the affiliates committee of the American Writers Museum. Under Haupt’s leadership, the Conroy Center has been honored as South Carolina’s first affiliate of the American Writers Museum, second American Library Association Literary Landmark, and winner of the Beaufort Regional Chamber of Commerce’s 2019 Civitas Award for Tourism Leadership. Earlier this year, Haupt was recognized with the Doug Marlette Literacy Leadership Award presented by the Pulpwood Queens, the largest book club in the U.S. Learn more about the Pat Conroy Literary Center at www.patconroyliterarycenter.org.
Above: Conroy Center execuive director/podcast host Jonathan Haupt with poet Tim Conroy.
