MarshSong Cottage, sitting creekside on a tidal marsh, is host to the spring and fall Pat Conroy Literary Center Writer’s Residencies. Mary Ellen Thompson welcomes writers to her guest cottage, located on Saint Helena Island in South Carolina, mid-way between downtown Beaufort and Hunting Island State Park.
MarshSong, so named for the melody the marsh mud plays at low tide, is situated on an historic property, once the first school in the nation for freed Black slaves. But the history goes deeper than that with ancient shell middens hinting at stories of other cultures.
The Cottage is a perfect writer’s sanctuary with views of water and woods; wildlife creatures and birds abound.
Pat Conroy Literary Center’s WRITER’S RESIDENCY
FALL 2025
~ Open to Writers in All Prose Genres | Deadline: August 11 ~
“As was customary in their nineteen years of marriage, he left the grits on his plate untouched, an unexpressed but articulate declaration, rooted in geography, that the society he married into had not assimilated him. All the totems of Bull’s disenchantment with the South could be carved from pillars of congealed grits. Since they had married, it was a point of honor between them that Lillian serve grits and Bull refuse to eat them. What had begun as a joke between them had become a resolute ceremony fraught with competition and even with something deeper, something almost mythological that separated them.”
—Pat Conroy, The Great Santini
WELCOME TO MARSHSONG COTTAGE
Coinciding with the annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will offer our ninth Conroy Center Writer's Residency this coming fall, available to writers of all prose genres. Located on a salt marsh, the residency at MarshSong Cottage provides an inspirational, creative space in the heart of Pat Conroy’s beloved lowcountry. The residency location is a guest cottage on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, approximately 15 minutes from downtown Beaufort and 15 minutes from the beach at Hunting Island State Park.
The residency dates will be October 22 to 29, 2025, overlapping with the 10th annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, which the selected writer will be invited to attend.
TO APPLY FOR THE WRITER'S RESIDENCY
Please submit the following by August 11, 2025, to contact@patconroyliterarycenter.org with the subject line CONROY CENTER WRITER'S RESIDENCY:
1) Grits or no grits? Are you Team Lillian or Team Bull? In 300 words or less—and in any form of writing you choose, tell us about your relationship with grits. Love them? Hate them? Have a favorite recipe or grits-flavored story?
2) Ceremony and mythology: Tell us about something of grand importance to your family or circle of friends which was treated as a kind of ceremony or mythology unique to your experiences. Got a tradition, custom, ritual, or habit that is idiosyncratic? Do tell—in 300 words or less and in any form of writing you choose.
3) Who are you? Send us a short bio, along with your contact information, up to 100 words, in first person prose please.
4) Do you have a favorite Pat Conroy book? If so, tell us which one, and why. Don’t have a favorite Conroy book? Then tell us which book by another author is closest to your heart and why in about 50 words.
5) How did you learn about this residency? Short answers welcome!
6) Finally, let’s have a look. Include a writing sample of your work, 3 – 5 double-spaced pages of prose in 12 pt Times New Roman or similar font. Attached to your email as PDF, please!
Completing all sections of the application as directed is essential. Incomplete applications will not be considered for the residency. Submissions will be reviewed by a panel of Conroy Center advisors. The selected writer will be notified by September 1.
The residency is open to both published and unpublished writers. If you have applied before but not been selected, we encourage you to apply again. Pat Conroy was a mentor to writers in all stages of their careers and we wish to honor that legacy.
The selected writer must provide her or his own transportation. Residency is for the writer only; no guests or pets.
WRITERS, WE LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR SUBMISSIONS!
Pat Conroy Literary Center | 601 Bladen St, Beaufort, SC 29902
843-379-7025 | contact@patconroyliterarycenter.org