Newswise — Author Pat Conroy will be the commencement speaker May 5 at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
Commencement is at 10 a.m. on the soccer field next to Lumbee Hall. An estimated 527 undergraduate and graduate candidates will receive diplomas in an outdoor ceremony.
Conroy made his mark with a revealing story of cadet life at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., in "The Lords of Discipline." That book was preceded by "The Water is Wide," the story of Conroy's brief teaching career on remote Daufuskie Island off the South Carolina coast.
Both books were made into movies as was his next novel, "The Great Santini," another biographical story about Conroy's abusive father.
Pat Conroy was born on October 26, 1945, in Atlanta, Ga. At The Citadel, he was captain and most valuable player of the basketball team. While still a student, he wrote and then published his first book, The Boo (1970), a tribute to a beloved teacher.
With a growing reputation as a master storyteller with a brilliantly revealing prose style, Conroy began "The Prince of Tides" while living in Rome. Five million copies later the book was made into a highly successful film directed by Barbara Streisand, who also starred in the film opposite Nick Nolte, who earned an Oscar nomination.
Beach Music (1995), Conroy's sixth book and his first novel since The Prince of Tides, tells the story of Jack McCall, an American who moves to Rome to escape the trauma and painful memory of his young wife's suicidal leap off a bridge in South Carolina. The story takes place in South Carolina and Rome, then reaches back in time to the Vietnam War and the horrors of the Holocaust.
Conroy's recent book, My Losing Season (2002), is about his college basketball career at The Citadel. In 2004, his cookbook and memoir, The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of My Life, was published.
RSS