The fourth annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival is in full swing, with a robust schedule of events in Beaufort and the surrounding Lowcountry.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>

This year’s festival began with the launch event for Cassandra King Conroy’s new memoir <i>Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy </i>at USCB Center for the Arts. Other Conroy-centric events in Beaufort will include a November 1 discussion of <i>Pat Conroy: Our Lifelong Friendship </i>by Bernie Schein at Old Bay Marketplace.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>

In keeping with this year’s themes – conservation and memoir – the festival will include appearances by <i>New York Times</i> best-selling novelists and conservationists Delia Owens (<i>Where the Crawdads Sing</i>) and Mary Alice Monroe (<i>The Beach House, The Summer Guests</i>); eco-memoirists Janisse Ray (<i>Ecology of a Cracker Childhood</i>), John Lane (<i>Neighborhood Hawks</i>), and Sally R. Murphy (<i>Turning the Tide</i>); the Coastal Conservation League’s Virginia and Dana Beach (<i>A Wholly Admirable Thing: Defending Nature and Community on the South Carolina Coast</i>); and historical interpreter Caroline McIntyre as Rachel Carson, author of <i>Silent Spring</i>. Student writers from Camp Conroy will also be reading from their conservation-themed summer project <i>Re-World</i>.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>

Additional festival sessions in Beaufort feature memoirs of family and self-discovery by Harrison Scott Key (<i>Congratulations, Who Are You Again?</i>), Kathryn Taylor (<i>Two Minus One</i>), and Judy Goldman (<i>Together: A Memoir of Marriage and a Medical Mishap</i>); and a poetry reading featuring Maureen Ryan Griffin, John Lane, Miho Kinnas, and Jon Pineda.

During Beaufort’s First Friday on November 1, festival authors will participate in downtown book signings at the Conroy Center, McIntosh Book Shop, NeverMore Books, and Thibault Gallery, beginning at 6:00 p.m., and an open mic reading will be offered at Common Ground coffee house. Artist and children’s author Clay Rice will also be on hand at the Conroy Center on Saturday, November 2, offering silhouette portraits by appointment.

Many of this year’s Conroy Festival events are FREE. For a complete schedule of and registration information, visit <a href="http://www.patconroyliteraryfestival.org">www.patconroyliteraryfestival.org.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></a>

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<em>Above: Festival presenter Delia Owens, New York Times best selling author of Where the Crawdads Sing.</em>