Conversations from The Prince of Tides House 0n the eve of the Pat Conroy Literary Festival
Conroy Center Board Chair Sean Scapellato & writer Matthew Quick. Photos by Amber Hewitt
There’s no shortage of places in Beaufort to enjoy water views and take in what legendary writer Pat Conroy famously described as, “The bold, fecund aroma of the tidal marsh, exquisite and sensual, the smell of the South in heat, a smell like new milk, semen, and spilled wine, all perfumed with sea water.” Yea, take a deep whiff of that descriptive gem.
Anyway, one such place with that kind of visual and olfactory delight is downtown, in Stephen Elliott Park, that green space tucked away along the six hundred block of Bay Street. The view includes the Woods Memorial Bridge, aka the swing bridge, and across the water to Factory Creek and the Whitehall Boat Landing on Lady’s Island. During low tide there must be twenty-five yards of glimmery brownish green pluff mud extending from the wall separating the park from the Beaufort River, all of it deliciously stinking up the joint.
On a recent early evening, about six hours past low tide, another smell competed with the mud, wafting from across the street at the stately Lewis Reeves Sams House, known popularly as The Prince of Tides House. It was the smell of excited book lovers gathering and releasing literary pheromones to signal the kickoff of the 2026 Pat Conroy Literary Festival.
Billed as the VIP event to get the weekend of readings, screenings, hobnobbing, and book-loving started, it included local writers, special guests, deep pocket denizens, and representatives of the Conroy Literary Center. With a smile that lit up the room, Center Board Chair Sean Scapellato explained the stakes.
“Events like this are really important [because] a lot of our programming is meant to be in service of readers, writers, teachers, and students,” he
Great Santini actor Michael O’Keefe
said. “This is an event where we focus a little bit on the fundraising aspect and how we feed the machine to keep it working year in and year out.”
Party-goers in turn were well fed themselves, with trays of mini crab cakes, fried oysters on crackers, and bacon wrapped asparagus circulating through the crowd. There were even pickled shrimp skewers made following Pat Conroy’s recipe. Liquid libations also flowed, though no service of perfumed sea water was detected. What was inescapably on display was a mad love of books, especially Conroy’s.
One such display was provided by special guest Matthew Quick, the author of the bestselling novels The Silver Linings Playbook and The Good Luck of Right Now (among others) who lives on Lady’s Island. His focused gaze intensified as he confessed admiration for Conroy’s whole vibe.
“I think he’s so unabashedly himself…he was an army brat, a basketball player, a wounded son,” Quick reflected. “And I just think he wears his heart on his sleeve. He is also a poet, too. Nobody paints the Lowcountry like he does… there’s just a goodness running through Pat’s work, you feel that there’s a human being really struggling to get it right.”
Quick was fast to heap praise on the Festival and how the Conroy Center continually creates such a quality event. He particularly enjoys the writer-reader connections that are made possible.
“When you look into someone’s eyes and you’re engaged with them on a human level and they tell you how your work has impacted them in a really profound way… you realize that you’re not alone, there’s other people out there that are having the same feelings, ideas, life experiences, and to me, that’s really edifying; it keeps me going.”
Another special guest was the talented actor Michael O’Keefe, one of the stars of the movie adaptation of Conroy’s novel The Great Santini, who enjoyed a deep friendship with the writer over the years. He recalled a time when Conroy also relished the writer-reader connection. It was at a book signing event, and according to O’Keefe there must have been a thousand people waiting to get books signed.
“And he never left his chair or lost energy,” O’Keefe marveled. “I’m sure that every single person who came in and got an autograph on their book felt like he was paying attention to them.”
Similar to Quick, O’Keefe is stunned by Conroy’s writing and recognizes its impact on his life.
“He wrote in a very powerful, poetic, meaningful way… especially for people like me,” O’Keefe said. “I feel such a debt to him because I was able to portray his alter ego in the movie. I owe him the kind of debt you can never fully repay, because had he not done what he did, I don’t even know if I’d have an acting career.”
O’Keefe, who earned an Oscar nomination for the role of Ben Meechum, shared that it was very cathartic to say the things in the movie that he’d always wanted to say to his own father.
Underlying all the smiley cocktail chatter, wonderful silent auction items, welcoming words, and subtle pitch for support of the Center was a foundational belief in the power of reading words on a page.
Conroy Center Board Chair Scapellato is a book collector and was a longtime friend of Conroy’s. He’s under no illusion about the existential threat posed to reading, but his eyes lit up as he declared residency on the optimistic side of the question.
“I would like to think that even the younger generations have parents who read, and that maybe as a result of that, they will pick up the habit,” Scapellato reasoned. “I think it’ll always be a challenge, and I think it’s something we’ll always work on as an organization, but I don’t want to be cynical about it. I’d like to think that books matter and will continue to matter.”
Michael O’Keefe and Lowcountry Weekly editor Margaret Evans
Scapellato believes that deep reading, sustained reading, offers a payoff you can’t get elsewhere. Actor Michael O’Keefe agrees, and he offered his own insight.
“When you get with a book, you get comfortable with yourself. And one of the great things about novels is that the author is really collaborating with the reader, because it wouldn’t be a book without the reader there to read it,” O’Keefe offered solemnly before concluding with a smile: “It’s like a good bartender – they’ve made you a martini, and they don’t drink it. They serve it to you, so you get to take it all in and enjoy it.”
But it was author Matthew Quick who brought a spiritual dimension that seemed to fit the event’s mood perfectly.
“Reading can be a form of prayer,” Quick offered reverently. “I think people sitting together and reading is kind of a secular way to do that, and I think that reading is aspirational, too. We’re also trying to understand what makes us human, you know, so that we can put that into service, consciously and subconsciously, towards something greater than just us.”
On this night, across the street from Conroy’s bold and fecund aroma there was a strong scent of connection, and a sense of unity. A crowd of exquisite and sensual individuals discussing books and words and Pat Conroy, turning a love of books into something greater than themselves.
