October 24, 2007 - on teachers, censorship, and banned books. I received an urgent e-mail from a high school student named Makenzie Hatfield of Charleston, West Virginia. She informed me of a group of parents who were attempting to suppress the teaching of two of my novels, The Prince of Tides and …
Articles
Eulogy for Doug Marlette
July 14, 2007 Dedicated to the Thirteen Danish Cartoonists I first met my charismatic, untamable and fire-eating friend Doug Marlette on a beautiful day in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I had come to sign copies of my first novel The Great Santini. In Belks' Department Store, where I had …
Pat Conroy for Gourmet Magazine
August 2006 On Paris, writing, food and friendship In the last days I would ever feel like a young man, I went to live in Paris to finish the novel I was writing at the time, The Lords of Discipline. While attending The Citadel, I had gone into an uncontrollable rapture when I read Ernest …
The Citadel Commencement Speech – “I wear the ring”
May 12, 2001 General Grinalds; the Board of Visitors; Lt. Col. Thomas Nugent Courvoisie, the Boo, and my first book; Greg and Mary Wilson Smith, The Citadel family who did more than anyone else to bring me back to my Citadel family; Skip Wharton; Rogers Harrell, member of the class of '01 [who] …
Pat Conroy talks about the South, his mother, and The Prince of Tides
(Taken from a speech delivered at the annual American Booksellers Association convention in 1985) My mother, southern to the bone, once told me, "All southern literature can be summed up in these words: 'On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.'" She …
Pat Conroy for PARADE Food Issue
Red hots vs. chili cheese dogs at The Varsity in Atlanta When I was growing up and lived at my grandmother's house in Atlanta, my mother would take her children after church on Sunday to The Varsity, an institution with more religious significance to me than any cathedral in the city. The Varsity …