Panel Discussion: Memoir vs. Fiction- TRUTH OR DARE
About this Event
Start this event with welcoming remarks from Robert Gwaltney, new Executive Director of the Pat Conroy Literary Center. Then, on to the main event:
Memoir vs. Fiction: TRUTH OR DARE
Three brilliant English professors and Conroy muses discuss Fiction vs Memoir – the courage and daring in Pat Conroy’s work and beyond, exploring the choices authors must make in telling hard truths. What are the requirements of each genre? Are there rules to the game? But aren’t rules made to be broken? And what’s “personal,” what’s “public?” Memoir raises more questions than any other literary form. After all, whose story is it anyway? We know (or think we do) that novelists make stuff up—that’s the whole point of fiction. But memoirists? If you are thinking of writing a memoir or a semi-autobiographical novel, or simply like reading them, then this panel is for you. You will learn some of the pitfalls and perils of each genre and learn some of the thinking behind the choices author Pat Conroy made when writing his five bestselling novels and his four books of nonfiction. And lastly, what were the consequences, if any, of his decisions?
Come prepared for a lively discussion on this landmark novel’s weekend-long 50th birthday party. (Tim Conroy ends the panel discussion with a poem about Santini!)
Booksigning in lobby 11:40-12:00
Patricia Hampl is a retired English Professor and a MacArthur Fellowship recipient for her contributions to the field of memoir and autobiographical writing. The author of seven memoirs, including A Romantic Education, her award-winning debut, and The Florist’s Daughter, Hampl has also published two books of poetry, travel pieces, essays, short fiction and poetry in various magazines including The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. She was a revered professor of creative nonfiction, memoir and poetry at the University of Minnesota for four decades.. The late poet Carol Conroy introduced Hampl to her brother Pat shortly after the publication of The Great Santini. She and Pat bonded as friends and aspiring writers during the three Minnesota summers Conroy spent vacationing on that rocky shoreline of Lake Superior where they gathered each year to share their work and their dreams
Ellen Malphrus, PhD. Pat’s friend and USCB poet and novelist Ellen Malphrus is a beloved professor of English and the Writer in Residence at University of SC Beaufort. She now mentor’s young writers, having benefitted herself by the mentoring of not only Pat Conroy but by writer James Dickey, the author of Deliverance and other novels and a recipient of a National Book Award in Poetry. When Pat chose to join Jonathan Haupt as a founding editor for Story River Books, an imprint at the University of South Carolina Press, one of the first novels he chose to publish was Ellen’s novel Untying the Moon. Ellen’s poetry, fiction, essays, creative nonfiction, and academic research has been widely published in literary journals, scholarly journals, anthologies, and books, including Poetry South, James Dickey Review, Southern Literary Journal, Blue Mountain Review and others. She has served as deputy director of this festival for a decade
Catherine Seltzer, PhD. Assoc. Professor at VCU -Virginia Commonwealth University- Seltzer teaches Southern Literature and Literary Biography as well as Gender and Women’s Studies. A prolific scholarly writer, Bloomsbury recently published her handbook to Toni Morrison’s work. Catherine was selected to write Understanding Pat Conroy which was published by the University of South Carolina Press. When Pat understood he was dying he trusted Catherine to become his biographer, encouraging her not to shy away from any unpleasant truths she uncovered. Her much-anticipated Pat Conroy biography, a major undertaking, is tentatively titled Man on Fire: the Life of Pat Conroy. The biography is expected to be released late in 2027 by Doubleday/Random House.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 17.85
