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Honorary Advisory Board

Pat Conroy

Born in Atlanta in 1945, Pat Conroy is one of America’s best-known and most popular authors, in demand everywhere he goes for public appearances. The author of eight books—four of which have been turned into major Hollywood films—Conroy has used a dysfunctional family background as a rich source of materials for his work. His first book, The Boo, was self-published in 1970 and was followed in 1972 by The Water Is Wide about his unconventional teaching career on an isolated barrier island. His 1976 novel The Great Santini was based on his relationship with his father, a Marine pilot, and for his 1980 novel The Lords of Discipline he drew on his college experiences at The Citadel. National bestsellers The Prince of Tides appeared in 1986 and Beach Music in 1995. My Losing Season (2002) chronicled his senior year experiences on The Citadel’s basketball team, and The Pat Conroy Cookbook (2004) offered recipes and tidbits of family lore. Conroy has lived for many years on the South Carolina coast, the setting for many of his books.

Roy Blount Jr.

Roy Blount Jr., one of America's most accomplished humorists, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1941, and grew up in Decatur, Georgia. He graduated with honors from Vanderbilt University and received a master's degree at Harvard before publishing 17 books which covered topics from pro football to Robert E. Lee, from Jimmy Carter to the nation's first female President. His first book, About Three Bricks Shy of a Load (1974), examined in uproarious, revealing prose a year in the life of the Pittsburgh Steelers pro football team. His second book, Crackers (1980), looked at the foibles of the South under the Carter administration. His first novel, First Hubby (1990), imagined the reversal of gender roles in the White House, and his personal memoir, Be Sweet (1998), looked back on his life with honest sentiment and a wry eye. Significantly, one of the volumes to his credit is the appropriately titled, Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor (1994) a collection that showcases the comic impulse from George Washington Harris and Twain to Jerry Clower and Memphis Minnie. When he's not writing, Blount may often be heard and seen on national programs such as Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion and The David Letterman Show.

Terry Kay

Terry Kay was born on a farm in Hart County in 1938, the eleventh of 12 children, and began his writing career in journalism, working for the Atlanta newspapers as a sportswriter and film and drama critic. He later worked in public relations before becoming a full-time writer by 1989. His first novel, The Year the Lights Came On (1976), was inspired by the coming of electricity to his rural community. Two dark, violent novels followed, After Eli in 1981 and Dark Thirty in 1984. He has published nearly a dozen books in different genres which have been translated into numerous foreign languages, written original plays, and produced a solid body of journalistic criticism. His best-known book, To Dance with the White Dog (1990) has become a Southern classic. Kay published a children's book, To Whom the Angel Spoke, in 1991, and followed that with the novel Shadow Song (1995), a love story set in Catskill Mountains where the author worked as a waiter in a Jewish resort. In 1999, he wrote a mystery set in Atlanta, The Kidnapping of Aaron Greene and in 2000, Taking Lottie Home, perhaps the author's personal favorite among his books. Other books include Special Kay: The Wisdom of Terry Kay (2000) and The Valley of Light (2003).

Tina McElroy Ansa

Novelist, journalist, essayist, and short story writer, Tina McElroy Ansa was born in Macon, Georgia in 1949. After graduating from Spelman College in Atlanta in 1971, Ansa began working as editor and writer for the Atlanta Constitution, and later at the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. Since 1982, she has been a freelance writer with work appearing in magazines, newspapers, and nonfiction anthologies. Her first novel, Baby of the Family, was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and also won the Georgia Authors Series Award. Ugly Ways was named "best fiction" by the African American Blackboard List in 1994, and The Hand I Fan With also won the Georgia Authors Series Award, making Ansa the only two-time winner of the award. In 2005, Ansa received the Stanley W. Lindberg Award, which honors a lifetime of significant contributions to Georgia's literary culture.

Anne Rivers Siddons

Siddons was born in 1936 in Atlanta and grew up in Fairburn, Georgia. Her education at Auburn University from 1954 to 1958 became the inspiration for her first novel, Heartbreak Hotel (1976), which was later made into the film Heart of Dixie in 1989. Perhaps best known for her books about Atlanta, two novels, Homeplace (1987) and Nora, Nora (2000), take place in a fictionalized version of her hometown, Fairburn, southwest of Atlanta. She is also the author of two books of nonfiction, Go Straight on Peachtree (1978), a McDonald City Guide to Atlanta, and John Chancellor Makes Me Cry (1975), a series of essays patterned around the changing seasons in Atlanta. Her novel Downtown (1994) recreates her early career as a writer and editor for Atlanta Magazine. Her most commercially successful book, Peachtree Road (1989), portrays modern Atlanta's white elite on the eve of the civil rights era.

Anthony Grooms

Anthony M. Grooms was born in 1955, The eldest of six children, he was raised and educated in rural Louisa County, Virginia, 120 miles south of Washington, D.C. Grooms graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1978 with a BA in Theatre and Speech. He continued his studies at George Mason University where he developed a professional interest in creative writing, graduating with a MFA in English in 1984. A published poet and novelist, Grooms is the author of a collection of poetry, Ice Poems (1988), a collection of stories, Trouble No More (1995) and the novel, Bombingham (2001), a notable book which focuses on characters struggling with the uncertainty of the civil rights movement. Tony Grooms is also a recipient of the Lillian Smith Prize for Fiction, the Sokolov Scholarship from the Breadloaf Writing Conference, the Lamar lectureship from Wesleyan College and an Arts Administration Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.