Past Residents
Holly Hart Shirley
Residency: Fall 2024
Call for Residency: Tell us a story: fiction, non-fiction, or personal essay about your entrance into the world of words, and what, or who, sparked your fascination with them.
Response: My Pa Julian told me bedtime stories about the Union Army circling a Georgia mountain as the rebel army held them at bay with few men, and no supplies. I could smell the gunpowder and feel the angst and distress of the soldiers that were his grandfather’s contemporaries. Pa spoke of them all with a personal attachment. He had not known these soldiers, apart from his grandfather, Abram Stanley Henley, who seventy years prior, had told the same bedtime stories to my Pa.
Pa had his own stories to tell. George Wallace ate biscuits at my Bigmama’s table when Pa was commissioner, and Pa wasn’t one bit surprised when Wallace was shot- said he had it coming for being a jackass and standing in the doorway. He told stories of Big Jim Folsom in a room full of hookers at Big Jim’s birthday party in Montgomery. The press wanted Big Jim to come out and cut the huge cake that had been rolled out for a photo op. Drunk, Big Jim grabbed a civil war sword from the wall and said, “You want me to cut the cake? I’ll cut the goddamned cake.” He cut the goddamned cake. Pa said he didn’t go near those ladies of the night, but he had heard that the other fellows were not disappointed.
I was captivated at a young age by colorful characters, and I love to study people; I need to know what makes people tick. Pa taught me at an early age how a good background story makes all the difference in character development. I don’t think he meant to do that, but he had such a natural gift with words and oral history that he made me want to preserve our family history and become a storyteller like him.
Who am I? I am an only child with thirteen brothers and sisters. My mother was a country singer, and my father is a very prolific, heavily decorated Vietnam Veteran who killed my first husband in self-defense. I come from a place in the woods near the Florida line in Alabama that should never be confused with the Panhandle. A descendant of Sehoy of the Wind Clan, I am a warrior. I can sing two notes at once like a train. I am an eternal optimist, a wife, a mother, an interior designer, a believer in innate goodness, and a decent storyteller.
Blog: http://www.deepsouthramblings.com
Photograph taken in Beaufort, SC. Mike McFee, Mary Ellen Thompson, Bren McClain, Holly Hart Shirley, Tim Conroy, Marly Rusoff, Cassandra King Conroy, Melissa Conroy, Kathy Harvey, Mary Martha Greene
Jeffrey Dale Lofton
Residency: Spring 2024
Call for Residency: Tell us a story: fiction, non-fiction, or personal essay about your favorite food, or recipe; where or who it came from and why it is important to you. Include the recipe if you would like.
Response: Mama made the best sweet tea and sad streak pound cake. The tea has the same cooling effect one gets from jumping off a tire swing into a lake that is 20 degrees cooler than the August air. But pound cake? Well, that is true nourishment that leaves a gooey deposit that lingers in back teeth on its way to the belly.
“Why do you call it a sad streak, Mama?”
“Well, if you press a finger on top of a piece of just cut, still warm pound cake, a little sugary and buttery batter seeps out. It weeps a little.”
I used to close my eyes to better feel the moist cake in my mouth each time I took a bite, and I thought it must have been sad because it didn’t get to be what it was supposed to be. Close but not exactly right. Mama said the heat of the pan cooked the outside to a buttery brown crust, but that saggy sad streak was batter that came this close to cooking through.
“If you have a sad streak, you’ve got a moist cake,” Mama explained.
And she was right. The goo stuck in the rough places in your teeth, just like her homemade communion wafers. Cold grape juice went best with the communion wafers, ’cause the preacher said so. A glass of ice-cold milk went best with a gluey, gooey pound cake’s thinnest layer of yum. . . . I’ve got a sad streak running right through me.
I love sad streak pound cake because Mama made it, and because it reminds me that my misshapen body may not have been quite right, but it was all I needed and as much as I wanted.
Hungry? The recipe’s on page 10 of this link: https://jeffreydlofton.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Recipes.pdf
Who I Am: I hail from Warm Springs, Georgia, but I’ve called the nation’s capital home for decades. I love telling stories and did so for years as an actor. Ultimately, I left that world to join the Library of Congress where I helped war veterans tell their stories destined for the library’s permanent collection. Today, I am a senior advisor at the library, surrounded by books and people who love them—in short, paradise. Throughout, I wrote and rewrote, at last producing my debut novel Red Clay Suzie, recently longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Website: https://jeffreydlofton.com
Photograph taken on Saint Helena Island, SC. Jeffrey D. Lofton, Bren McClain, Mike McFee, Patricia Denkler, Mary Ellen Thompson, Mary Martha Greene
Kaye Wilkinson Barley
Residency: Fall 2023
Call for Residency: “I want to tell you how it was. I want precision. I want a murderous, stunning truthfulness. I want to find my own singular voice for the first time.”
Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline
What are you seeking? Tell us how being in the lowcountry for a residency will benefit your writing, and how your presence will benefit the people you meet here. “In 2013, I published my WHIMSEY: A NOVEl. It's ranked 4 out of 5 stars with 141 global ratings at Amazon. It is set in the low country on the magical island of Whimsey. I am trying to write a sequel, but have changed direction several times. But I have not given up. I honestly feel the opportunity to spend some time, by myself, surrounded by the beauty and magic of the lowcountry would help me get my mojo back in a way that I will be able to write and continue the stories that I know the Island of Whimsey wants to continue to share.”
Who are you? Kaye Wilkinson Barley of Boone, NC, While Pat Conroy was living, my husband and I travelled around the southeast to attend his signings and own all his books. Anxiously awaiting the bio, Man on Fire by Catherine Seltzer. I wrote this piece when I learned Mr. Conroy had died. I live with my husband in the North Carolina mountains. I’m a voracious reader and lover of books, a long-time blogger, an indie author, an amateur photographer, dabbler in mixed media collages, and fiddler of fiber arts. I believe creativity is essential to the soul.
Website: www.kayewilkinsonbarley.com
Photograph taken at The Pat Conroy Literary Center. Kaye with Anita Singleton Prather, aka Aunt Pearlie Sue.
Heather Bell Adams
Residency: Spring 2023
Call for residency: The most powerful words in English are, tell me a story.
Pat Conroy, My Reading Life
Tell us a story - fiction, non-fiction, memoir, or poetry, your story must include the following: pickled shrimp, a particular attribute of the salt marsh, an anecdote about the same sweet girls you once knew, and your favorite southern phrase.
Response: Chill Before Serving
I’m running out of time to ask about the secret ingredient in Mother’s pickled shrimp. The recipe card contains what you’d expect—cider vinegar, olive oil, celery, onion, fennel. Now that she’s laid up with cancer, the sweet girls I knew in high school bring over casseroles.
This afternoon I catch Mother alone. “Will you tell me the secret ingredient?”
She raises her plucked eyebrows. “You barely like shrimp.”
“One day I might marry and have kids. One of them could love it.”
“You’re not even dating anybody.”
“Are you really this stubborn?” I cross my arms, displaying the tattoos she despises. Through the open window, the scent of pluff mud carries both life and decay. “Red pepper? Lemon juice?”
She laughs bitterly. “Bless your heart.”
In the days after her funeral, I make pickled shrimp ten different ways, adding garlic, cayenne pepper, anything I can think of. Nothing is right.
My father shuffles into the kitchen. He’s never bugged me about settling down, never asked why I dropped out of college, or what happened to the boy I went to prom with.
“She had it so easy,” I say. “Married her childhood sweetheart. Never had to work. What did she have to worry about? The perfect pink lipstick?”
My father pats my shoulder. “You’d be surprised.”
Tears slip down my cheeks and slide into the bowl, the pink curls of shrimp like question marks. This batch turns out exactly like I remember.
What are you seeking? As a North Carolina writer, I’ve long admired the South Carolina lowcountry, and my next novel-length manuscript happens to be set along the coast. Spending eight days in Beaufort would enable me to capture the quintessential details of life in the area—the delicate dance of a heron taking flight, the sun gilding the marsh grasses, the afternoon breeze softening the humidity like a mother’s touch.
The characters in my work-in-progress have lived on the coast for generations. The Pat Conroy residency would provide the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded people. Having never lived on the coast myself, I’m eager to learn more about the ups and downs. Getting insight like this would help me get the details right.
If selected, I hope my presence would also benefit the people I meet along the way. I’ve spent the last year serving as North Carolina’s 2022 Piedmont Laureate. In my capacity as an ambassador for the literary arts, I’ve helped and inspired writers in all walks of life. South Carolina has such a vibrant literary arts community, and I would be thrilled to forge connections with a new group of friends.
Website: https://heatherbelladams.com
Photograph taken in Beaufort, SC with Mary Ellen Thompson, Mike McFee, Margaret Evans, Bren McClain, Kim Poovey, Heather Bell Adams.
Robert Gwaltney
What’s it like to attend a writer's residency? Read Robert Gwaltney’s gorgeous personal essay, Lick the Sherbert Sky, which was published in Southern Literary Review in April 2023: CLICK HERE TO READ
Residency: Fall 2022
Call for residency: “The great salt marsh spreading all around as far as the eye could see has remained the central image that runs through my work. I cannot look at a salt marsh, veined with salt creeks swollen with the moonstruck tides, without believing in God.”
Pat Conroy, The Pat Conroy Cookbook
Tell us a story. “Sing Down the Moon”, the title of my novel in progress, is a work of southern fiction with gothic tendencies and elements of magical realism. The story takes place on Good Hope, a fictitious Georgia coastal barrier island during the autumn of 1931.
A fourteen-year-old-girl dreams of leaving her home on an isolated Georgia coastal barrier island to escape her destiny as caregiver of an ancient tree that captures ghosts.
On a stretch of Good Hope’s marsh, lives fourteen-year-old Leontyne Skye and her mother Eulalee. Leontyne and her mother come from a long line of Skye women, women of mysterious origin, whose purpose is to tend Damascus, an ancient tree unlike any other known in the world, a tree big as the oldest oak with banyan-like roots trailing off into the marsh. Damascus, a haint-trap-tree, is made of oyster shell bark and crystalized salt branches and leaves that lures lost and wandering souls from across the river, trapping and dissolving them within the confines of Sara figs blooming from its branches. From these Sarah figs, the women manufacture a tincture known as redemption—a highly addictive drug with euphoric properties. Those seeking Redemption are known as Sinners.”
What does a marsh residency offer you? “A marsh view residency not only offers me the rare opportunity for concentrated time away from the chaotic pace of my nonprofit work to focus on writing, it also offers the invaluable opportunity to research the marsh, a central character in my next novel, Sing Down the Moon.
Capturing sense of place will be critical to the project—understanding the play of light, the sounds, smells, and creatures dwelling within this unique ecosystem, the experience ultimately providing me the canvas and tools to paint my story with words.”
Bio: “Raised alongside three feral, younger brothers in the rash-inducing, subtropical climate of Cairo Georgia, I am a lifelong resident of the South. A circumstance, no doubt, leaving an indelible mark upon my voice as a writer.
A graduate of Florida State University, I reside in Atlanta Georgia where I am an active member of the literary community serving on the board of Broadleaf Writers Association. By day, I work as Vice President of Easter Seals North Georgia, a non-profit strengthening families and their children at the most critical times in their development. In all the hours between, I write.”
Website: robertlgwaltney.com
Photo taken in Beaufort; Robert with Mike McFee and The Cicada Tree cake made by Kathy Poole.
Janna Zonder
Residency: Spring 2022
Open to writers with “A Belief in Astonishment”
Call for Residency: “I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing but faith and a belief in astonishment.”
Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline
Tell us a story. What is your work in progress?
The Phenomenon’s Daughter
In 1960s Georgia, the comical, good-natured women of the Flowers family somehow manage to stay afloat, but laughter can’t save them when their rickety lifeboat is swamped by poverty, misogyny, and violence.
My novel in progress, The Phenomenon's Daughter, is a coming-of-age story set in Georgia during the 1950s and 1960s, at a time when misogyny and racism ruled. It is written in the style of a memoir, in a series of connected stories, combining fiction with actual historical events."
The lively, irreverent Flowers family, consisting of a grandmother, mother, and two pre-teen daughters, are barely getting by. According to mother, Ava Rose, they're hanging on by "tooth and toenail." Her decision to move them to Phenix City, Alabama, in hopes of a better life, could not come at a worse time. Phenix City is in the grips of a brutal "southern mafia" that beats and robs local servicemen and preys on young women by trapping them into prostitution and sexual slavery.
At times hilarious and heart-breaking, The Phenomenon's Daughter celebrates the resilience of mothers and daughters who are shaped by a culture intent on silencing them.”
What are you seeking? Tell us what Pat’s lines from The Lords of Discipline quoted above mean to you.
Response: “I have always regretted not making an effort to meet Pat Conroy. Or, at least, to have written a fan letter to him. He was, by far, my favorite author. He explored his life with vulnerability and passion, mining the trauma of his childhood to create beautiful works of literature. One of his books opened my heart enough to allow me to begin to heal from my own traumatic childhood. I’ve been thinking a lot about “experts” lately. I’ve looked for advice my entire adult life, always putting the experts’ sensibilities above my own. I’ve decided to listen to my own inner voice, to follow my “unproven method,” and to be guided by faith in the wisdom of my inner knowing. This astonishes me, both that it took me so long to arrive at this certainty and in how incredibly free I feel now. "
How will being in the lowcountry for a residency benefit your writing and your belief in astonishment? ”To write in the lowcountry surrounded by the sea and marsh that Mr. Conroy loved; to be near the people who loved him, with their stories to tell; to walk among the beloved landmarks . . . I can’t imagine a more perfect place to complete the final draft of my novel."
Bio: “I grew up on a farm in Georgia. I have plowed behind a mule, helped butcher hogs, and now I’m a (almost) vegan ukulele player. Skirt! Magazine published three of my essays. My short story, "Who Kills The Bugs For the Dalai Lama?" won Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train contests in 2015 and 2018. My first novel, Magenta Rave, published in 2013, is a thriller/revenge story that targets sexual predators.”
Blog Post about Pat Conroy: https://www.jannazonder.com/post/pat-conroy-broke-my-heart-in-the-best-possible-way
Website: www.jannazonder.com
Photo taken in Beaufort, Janna with artist Jonathan Green.
Kathy Meadows
Residency: Fall 2021
Call for Residency: “The great salt marsh spreading all around as far as the eye could see has remained the central image that runs through my work. I cannot look at a salt marsh, veined with salt creeks swollen with the moonstruck tides, without believing in God.”
Pat Conroy, The Pat Conroy Cookbook
Tell us a story... about water. What is your work in progress? And how is water (as subject or theme) essential to your creative work?
Response: “Water is a recurring theme. The power that brought this ancient family to South Carolina is the ocean. The power that the family estate feeds on are stones christened by the water of the marsh. Through fantasy, I long to connect the next generation of readers to the often inexplicable connections between everyday reality, spirit, and nature - in this case, fueled by water.”
Work In Progress: “Soul Searching is a young adult fantasy novel about an afterlife with options. The story is about Allie MacRae, a 13-year old foster child who is suddenly claimed by a long-lost relative and whisked to an isolated LowCountry home in South Carolina. Here she discovers the world is much bigger than it seems when she’s indoctrinated into the family business, a secret organization spanning a thousand years.
How will a residency in the lowcountry benefit your writing? “My novel of focus is set in the South Carolina lowcountry, a place I’ve always longed to go. My desire was first spawned from reading Pat Conroy’s novels, his haunting settings seemingly lost in time and space. In my dreams I think my spirit may be lurking on one of the lowcountry islands and I but need to be there to become whole. I’ll know it when I find it. Your residency will help infuse the setting in my story with richness and realism, and who knows, perhaps I’ll discover my wayward spirit while I’m at it.”
Bio: “I’m a city girl with a country soul. Born in Mississippi, raised in New Orleans, and living in Dallas.”
Julie Cantrell
Residency: Fall 2020
Open to Southern Fiction Writers
Call for Residency: “Writers of the world, if you’ve got a story, I want to hear it. I promise it will follow me to my last breath.”
Pat Conroy, My Reading Life
Tell us a story. What is your Southern fiction work in progress?
Work in Progress: “Courtney Quinn, a 33-year-old newlywed becomes widowed during her honeymoon in Cinque Terre. When she flies home, she learns her in-laws have taken legal action to make sure she doesn’t inherit any of their family’s money.
Having resigned from her job, sold her home, and moved away from small-town Magnolia Bay, South Carolina, she’s now been given 24 hours to leave her Buckhead dream house. With options few, she accepts a position back home caring for the fiercely independent 95-year-old Merriweather Applegate.
The two bond over an old quilt, in which Merriweather has stitched secrets between the panels. As nearly a century of truths are set free, we learn the value of a woman’s work and the pieces of life that matter most.”
How will being in the lowcountry for a residency benefit your writing? ”Aside from hoping to retire in the lowcountry someday, I’ve wanted to set the story in that area. I’d love to research and write this manuscript from Beaufort, surrounded by the inspiring marshland, rivers, and sea islands. As a southern writer, I care very much about creating a sensory-rich experience for my readers, building out the setting as a character in the story. For this reason, I’d be extremely grateful for the opportunity to write from South Carolina as I shape this work.”
Bio: Julie Cantrell is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author and TEDx speaker whose work has earned numerous awards. In addition to writing contemporary and historical fiction, creative nonfiction, children’s books, poetry, and essays, she served as editor-in-chief of the Southern Literary Review and currently works as a developmental editor, book coach, and ghostwriter across numerous genres. She’s also an adjunct writing professor at Drexel University, a certified speech-language pathologist, and a naturalist who loves to explore the many wonders of this world. She whole-heartedly believes in the power of story to inspire and unite us all.
Website: www.juliecantrell.com / www.bluesparked.com
Photo taken in Beaufort, Mary Ellen Thompson, Julie Cantrell, Bonnie Hargrove
David Kiser
Residency: Spring 2020
Call for residency: “I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the lowcountry, inked in dark gold, on my back and shoulders.”
Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
Tell us a story. What is your work in progress?
Response: “I am writing a general history of music in South Carolina. We have a rich musical heritage and I want to trace it’s lineage from the beginning in a way that hasn’t been done before. I’ll examine the moving and powerful story of the Gullah spirituals of St. Helena Island, which I believe contain the kernel of American Music… There is another story I will tell as well. It’s the story of the grand European musical tradition transported and then transmitted in the state of South Carolina.”
How will a residency in the lowcountry benefit your writing? “I don’t intend the residency to be a formal research trip. I see the residency allowing me to quietly engage with the rich history of St. Helena Island to begin structuring and focusing my work through the process of writing. I have done a healthy amount of initial research and I need this residency to allow me the time and serenity to begin what I believe could be a culturally significant contribution to our state, to the slowly disappearing culture of the Sea Islands, and to the memory of the composers and musicians who lived and worked here. The work will be a “MarshSong” of sorts and I think in many ways I was won over by the marshes and puff mud like Pat Conroy was and discovered American music might have taken root here.”
Bio: “I am the host and producer of South Carolina Public Radio’s On the Keys. I also teach music theory at Anderson University. I live with my wife and two daughters in Greenville. For fun I like to camp and read southern literature (sometimes at the same time). “
Photo taken in Beaufort, Mary Ellen Thompson, David Kiser, Cassandra King Conroy, Kathy Conroy Harvey.