Novelist Jeyda Bolukbasi

As seen on ETV’s award-winning author interview series By the River, Jeyda Bolukbasi is a seventeen-year-old author and artist from Walterboro, S.C., where she attends Colleton Preparatory Academy. She is also the first junior volunteer staff member at the Center for Birds of Prey in Awendaw and a member of the Carolina Bird Club. Bolukbasi published her first novel, Tuah, when she was fourteen.

On Tuesday, June 7, at 5:00 p.m., NeverMore Books and the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host an in-person and live-streamed conversation with Bolukbasi about her recently released second novel, The Phoenix, hosted by Conroy Center intern Millie Bennett and executive director Jonathan Haupt.

Free and open to public, this in-person event will be held at NeverMore Books (910 Port Republic Street) with books available for sale and signing. Seating is limited; please call the store to reserve your spot: 843-812-9460. The author conversation will also be streamed on the Conroy Center’s Facebook page.

About The Phoenix
On the night that she was to earn her mythical phoenix fire, a young phoenix Amber discovers that her parents have been killed. Distraught and orphaned, she must survive the harsh and dangerous northern winter in her mystical home, the Valley. When a midland phoenix leads her to the southern lands to defend against a rival group known as the Radicals, Amber begins to unfold the secrets of the war-stricken father she never knew, until a harrowing betrayal leaves her alone in the mountains again. Can she find the strength to take flight and face the secrets of northern mountains in one last fight of fire against fire?

About the Interviewers
Pat Conroy Literary Center intern and Beaufort High School junior Millie Bennett is a writer, visual artist, singer, and actress. A student in the AP Capstone Program, she is also a founding member of the BHS chapter of Letters for Rose, dedicated to reducing loneliness in nursing homes and assisted living residents during the pandemic. 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 SCAD Summer Sessions for Visual Art, Animation, and Character Development.

Jonathan Haupt is the executive director of the nonprofit Conroy Center, the former director of the University of South Carolina Press, and co-editor of Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy, the recipient of seventeen book awards.

Learn more about NeverMore Books at www.nevermorebooks.com.

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