Pat Conroy

Pat Conroy was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1945 and was the first of seven children. Having a military father, the Conroy family moved frequently to military bases throughout the South. Pat Conroy eventually attended The Citadel, a military college in Charleston, South Carolina. After graduating, Conroy taught English and Psychology at Beaufort High School, and, in 1969, he began teaching underprivileged children in a one-room schoolhouse in Daufuskie. After just a year of teaching in Daufuskie, Conroy was fired for his unconventional teaching methods and ended his career as a teacher, dedicating himself to full-time writing. From 1970 through 2013, Conroy wrote eleven books. In 2014, he became the editor-at-large for Story River Books, his original southern fiction imprint at the University of South Carolina Press with Story River Press. On March 4, 2016, Pat Conroy passed away from pancreatic cancer.
 
1974: Received a special citation from the National Education Association
1988: Inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors
1993: Awarded the Golden Plate by the American Academy of Achievement
1995: Awarded the Thomas Cooper Medal for Distinction in the Arts
1996: Received the Humanitarian Award from the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust
2002: Awarded the South Carolina Order of the Palmetto
2003: Awarded the Thomas Wolfe Prize by the Department of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel              Hill as well as the Book of the Year Award from the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA)
2004: Inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame
2005: Awarded the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award
2006: Awarded the Outstanding Author Award by the Southeast Library Association
2009: Inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame
2010: Received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the South Carolina Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor’s Award              for the Arts