Our Prince of Scribes

Writers Remember Pat Conroy

Edited by Nicole Seitz and Jonathan Haupt

Foreword by Barbra Streisand

Afterword by Cassandra King Conroy

Title Details

Pages: 320

Illustrations: 26 b&w images

Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in

Formats

Hardcover

Pub Date: 09/15/2018

ISBN: 9-780-8203-5448-4

List Price: $29.95

eBook

Pub Date: 09/15/2018

ISBN: 9-780-8203-5449-1

List Price: $30.95

Paperback

Pub Date: 09/15/2019

ISBN: 9-780-8203-5685-3

List Price: $25.95

Subsidies and Partnerships

Published with the generous support of Georgia Writers Hall of Fame

Our Prince of Scribes

Writers Remember Pat Conroy

Edited by Nicole Seitz and Jonathan Haupt

Foreword by Barbra Streisand

Afterword by Cassandra King Conroy

An illuminating collection of essays honoring the literary legacy of Pat Conroy

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  • Description
  • Reviews
  • Awards
  • Contributors

New York Times best-selling writer Pat Conroy (1945–2016) inspired a worldwide legion of devoted fans numbering in the millions, but none are more loyal to him and more committed to sustaining his literary legacy than the many writers he nurtured over the course of his fifty-year writing life. In sharing their stories of Conroy, his fellow writers honor his memory and advance our shared understanding of his lasting impact on twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary life in and well beyond the American South.

Conroy’s was a messy fellowship of people from all walks of life. His relationships were complicated, and people and places he thought he’d left behind often circled back to him at crucial moments. The pantheon of contributors includes Pulitzer Prize winners Rick Bragg and Kathleen Parker; Grammy winners Barbra Streisand and Janis Ian; Lillian Smith Award winners Anthony Grooms and Mary Hood; National Book Award winner Nikky Finney; James Beard Foundation Award winners Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart; a corps of New York Times best-selling authors, including Ron Rash, Sandra Brown, and Mary Alice Monroe; Conroy biographers Katherine Clark and Catherine Seltzer; longtime Conroy friends Bernie Schein, Cliff Graubart, John Warley, and Walter Edgar; Pat’s students Sallie Ann Robinson and Valerie Sayers; members of the Conroy family; and many more.

Each author in this collection shares a slightly different view of Conroy. Through their voices, a vibrant, multifaceted portrait of him comes to life and sheds new light on the writer and the man. Loosely following Conroy’s own chronology, the essays in Our Prince of Scribes wind through his river of a story, stopping at important ports of call. Cities he called home and longed to visit, along with each book he birthed, become characters that are as equally important as the people he touched and loved along the way.

Pat Conroy was a force for good in our world. With courage and grace, he brought the gifts of the devastating beauty of his writing and his transcendent vision of the human heart to the lives of the readers he touched and the writers he inspired.

—Barbra Streisand, from the foreword to Our Prince of Scribes

Pat Conroy could write with an elegance that made most writers either envious or hopeless, yet was generous and encouraging, a champion. If a man can live in memory, it is Pat Conroy.

—Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin', Ava's Man, and The Prince of Frogtown.

What could be better than so many voices coming together to celebrate Pat Conroy? This book is a testament to the enormous hold he had on our hearts and minds.

—Ann Patchett, New York Times best-selling author of Bel Canto and Commonwealth

In reading this collection, I felt Pat Conroy come back to life—his heroism, his kindness, his unparalleled generosity, his vulnerability, his raunchy, wicked humor, his love for family and the low country.

—Dannye Romine Powell, author and book editor for the Charlotte Observer

A compelling read that illuminates the man behind the myth, a writer’s writer, a fantastic storyteller, a flawed genius, and an exceptionally loyal friend.

—Kirkus Reviews

Conroy's expansive sensibility proved seductive to those who loved him. His friends and acquaintances tend to evoke him with a chorus of superlatives, sometimes cloyingly so. It's what gives Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy the frequently breathless tone of a fan magazine.

—Danny Heitman, The Wall Street Journal

Commended

NYC Big Book Award (Distinguished Favorite)

Winner

Best Anthology, Independent Press Awards

Winner

Best Independent Book, Best Indie Book Award

Winner

Best Achievement Award, Pinnacle Book

Winner

Official Selection, Pulpwood Queens Book Club

Short-listed

Best Regional Nonfiction

Winner

Okra Pick, Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance

Winner

International Book Award (Anthology), American Book Fest

Runner-up

IPPY Awards, Independent Publisher Magazine

Dottie Ashley

William A. Balk

Rick Bragg

Sonny Brewer

Sandra Brown

Jonathan Carroll

Ryder Carroll

Mark Childress

Katherine Clark

John Connor Cleveland

Melissa Conroy

Tim Conroy

Debbi Covington

Nathalie Dupree

Walter Edgar

Stephanie Austin Edwards

Margaret Evans

Nikky Finney

Connie May Fowler

Jonathan Galassi

Judy Goldman

Scott Graber

Cliff Graubart

Cynthia Graubart

Anthony Grooms

Alexia Helsley

Patti Callahan Henry

Mary Hood

Josephine Humphreys

Janis Ian

Terry Kay

John Lane

David Lauderdale

Ellen Malphrus

Andy Marlette

Bren McClain

Teresa Miller

Wendell Minor

Mary Monroe

Michael Morris

Kathy L. Murphy

Michael O’Keefe

Steve Oney

Kathleen Parker

Mark Powell

Ron Rash

Sallie Ann Robinson

Lawrence S. Rowland

Jonathan Sanchez

Alex Sanders

Valerie Sayers

Sean Scapellato

Bernie Schein

Maggie Schein

Nicole Seitz

Lynn Seldon

Catherine Seltzer

Anne Rivers Siddons

George Singleton

William Walsh

John Warley

Ashley Warlick

Teresa K. Weaver

Marjory Wentworth

About the Author/Editor

Nicole Seitz (Editor)
NICOLE SEITZ is the author of seven novels, including, most recently, The Cage-Maker and Beyond Molasses Creek. She lives in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

Jonathan Haupt (Editor)
JONATHAN HAUPT is the executive director of the Pat Conroy Literary Center and the founding director of the annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival in Beaufort, South Carolina.