Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonathan Haupt.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I first came to South Carolina in 2004 to serve as marketing director for the University of South Carolina Press in Columbia. In that capacity, I came to know Pat Conroy, who was of course the biggest name in South Carolina literature at the time and one of the South’s most beloved storytellers. When I became director (publisher) of USC Press in 2011, Pat became my mentor and my publishing partner in the Story River Books original southern fiction imprint we created together. During the last few years of his life, he committed himself to teaching me and our Story River writers as much as he could from the storied arc of his 50-year writing career as a bestselling author. He also committed himself to teaching his millions of readers about our Story River writers and championing these books and their authors.
Working with Pat and learning from him was transformative for me, showing me what a life of service can and should be. When Mr. Conroy passed away in 2016, his family and friends rallied together to create the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center as a living legacy to Pat, honoring and continuing his work as a mentor and storyteller. The Center’s board invited me to serve as the executive director in late 2016. I left the world of university press publishing after nearly 20 years to help create our nonprofit in Beaufort. As the Center’s executive director, I now have the honor of helping our communities of readers, writers, teachers, and students through our interpretive center (601 Bladen St.) and our year-round calendar of writers workshops, author events, book club discussions, and literary festivals.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Launching a new nonprofit is quite the undertaking! The Conroy Center started out in about 700 square feet of rented space and now occupies a 3,000-square-foot building which we were able to purchase through the generosity of our donors earlier this year. We are fortunate to have such a supportive group of donors and volunteers who make the vital work of the Center not only possible, but an absolute pleasure.
Obviously, the circumstances of our pandemic era have brought a new set of challenges and opportunities for our work as well. During the shutdown in 2020, we were able to pivot into a robust catalogue of virtual programs, including virtual tours, online workshops, and a massive archive of freely available video content. Doing so allowed us to foster a national–and often international–audience for our programs which continues to this day, even as in-person programming and tours have become possible again.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Over the course of nearly 20 years in publishing, I worked on the marketing or editorial side of close to 1,000 books. But I never wrote one–and I still haven’t. But I am the embarrassingly proud co-editor of the anthology “Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy,” which was published in 2018 by the University of Georgia Press with funding support from the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
The book has since won 17 book awards, and its royalties support the educational mission of our nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center, honoring Pat’s legacy as a lifelong mentor. The book collects the memories of 67 writers, including me, who were taught, mentored, or befriended by Pat over the course of his writing life, which began as a Beaufort High School student. The contributors include Pulitzer Prize winners Rick Bragg and Kathleen Parker, New York Times best-selling novelists Patti Callahan Henry and Ron Rash, two-time Lillian Smith Book Award winner Anthony Grooms, National Book Award-winning poet Nikky Finney, and many others. Coeditor Nicole Seitz (author of the novel “The Cage Maker”) and I spent more than a year gathering together these empowering, inspiring stories from our fellow Conroy mentees, each one giving freely of her or his time and words in recognition of Pat’s generosity of spirit in their own lives. Most of the contributing writers have also participated in public conversations and workshops inspired by the book and held across more than a dozen states, further paying forward Pat’s faith in us as writers and as educators. “Our Prince of Scribes” remains the book I am most proud of, from the full span of my publishing career.
Throughout my publishing career, I have had the honor of mentoring more than a dozen college students with interests in publishing and marketing work. As executive director of the Conroy Center, I had the opportunity to mentor several remarkable young writers from Pat Conroy’s alma mater Beaufort High School, beginning with an award-winning young writer named Holland Perryman, who took the initiative to create our internship program when she was just 14. Holland is now a 17-year-old Beaufort High School senior, student body president, captain of the Girls Varsity Lacrosse Team, winner of the Ann Head Literary Award for Short Story, and the first poet of any age to be twice featured on the TELLY Award-winning SC ETV author interview series “By the River.” In response to the social justice literary programs she has experienced and co-hosted with me through our Conroy Center, Holland was inspired earlier this year to create DAYLO: Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization, already the largest student-founded club at Beaufort High. And I now mentor two of Holland’s fellow DAYLO members, Millie Bennett and Alisha Arora, who are also remarkable young servant leaders It’s a tremendous honor and joy to get to guide this trio of dedicated young creatives through this formative chapter of their lives, in the same generous spirit with with Pat mentored me late in his life and was mentored himself as a Beaufort High School student by his own teachers. I’m more than a little proud of Holland, Millie, and Alisha, and particularly of their bold vision for DAYLO and its capacity to make such a positive impact in the lives of students and their communities.
Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
I grew up in a small town in Illinois, north of Chicago and on Lake Michigan. We had a small local used book and comic book shop called Galaxy of Books that was essential to my immersion into books and stories. The owner Eileen had a remarkable talent for helping young readers expand their reading list from comics and children’s books to thematically similar classics and contemporary works. Eileen helped foster my love of mysteries as a kid, from Encyclopedia Brown to the Hardy Boys to Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple. Years later, after I had been working in publishing for a while, I got to see Eileen again at a publishing trade show in Chicago and to thank her for how much her bookstore and her recommendations had meant to me as a teenager.
Contact Info:
- Email: jonathan@patconroyliterarycenter.org
- Website: www.patconroyliterarycenter.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patconroyliterarycenter/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patconroyliterarycenter
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/PatConroyLiteraryCenter
