The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center is proud to welcome two new student interns from Pat Conroy’s alma mater, Beaufort High School, Alisha Arora and Millie Bennett. The Conroy Center’s internship program was created by Holland Perryman, now BHS student body president and also the first student intern of the statewide Friends of South Carolina Libraries. Conroy Center interns are mentored by executive director Jonathan Haupt and assist in both in-person and virtual public educational programming for writers, readers, students, and teachers, while learning about writing, literature, marketing, and arts leadership.
Alisha Arora is a senior at BHS, where she is captain of the Girls Varsity Tennis Team and vice president of the National Honor Society. Raised in the Lowcountry, Alisha is also a member of the Spanish National Honor Society and the Interact Club. An accomplished AP and Honors student in numerous STEM courses, with an emphasis on the biological sciences, she is the recipient of Academic Excellent Awards. Alisha has been a dancer since 2006, and has been dancing competitively since 2013. She volunteers as an assistant teacher for younger peers at her dance studio. A voracious reader, Alisha also volunteers her time at the main branch of the Beaufort County Library System. In addition, she coaches younger players at a summer tennis clinic and assists in her family’s local business.
Beaufort native Emily “Millie” Bennett is a BHS junior, where she is a dedicated 
student in the AP Capstone Program and a member of the Interact Club (where she enjoys assisting with the CAPA Ghost Tours and community cleanup projects). Millie is also a founding member of the BHS chapter of Letters for Rose, an organization dedicated to reducing loneliness in nursing homes and assisted living residents during the COVID-19 pandemic through letters and artwork. In the eighth grade, she was designated a South Carolina Junior Scholar by the SC Department of Education. In 2020, Millie was selected for the SC Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities Summer Program for Visual Arts, and in 2021, she participated in the Savannah College of Art and Design Summer Sessions for Visual Art, Animation, and Character Development. Her many talents include drawing, painting, and digital art, which complement her passion for storytelling rooted in a thoughtful historical perspective. Millie is also an accomplished actress and singer, having performed in multiple Beaufort Middle School plays (including the role of Snoopy in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown).
Alisha and Millie are both members of BHS’s DAYLO: Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization, a student service club founded by Holland Perryman, the first intern of the Conroy Center. They will be participating in DAYLO’s collaborations with the Conroy Center during the 6th annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival (November 4-7), the 6th annual Bluffton Book Festival (November 18-20), and the Conroy Center’s 6th annual March Forth (March 4-6), in addition to many other educational programs throughout the fall and spring.
To learn more about the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center, visit the Center in person at 601 Bladen Street in Beaufort, Thursday through Sunday, noon to 4:00 p.m., or online at www.patconroyliterarycenter.org and www.facebook.com/patconroyliterarycenter.
