Mindy Lucas interviews columnist and veteran bookseller Will Balk on the porch of the Pat Conroy Literary Center, where he serves as volunteer coordinator.

By Margaret Evans, Editor

Ryan Copeland on The Beauty of Beaufort, his new book with Lydia Inglett and the Photography Club of Beaufort.

When I heard that Lydia Inglett, Ryan Copeland, and the Photography Club of Beaufort were joining forces to create a new book about Beaufort, I could hardly wait to get my hands on it. Both Lydia and Ryan are longtime friends of Lowcountry Weekly: Lydia was our original art director and Ryan’s writing has enlivened our pages over the years. As for the Photography Club, I can’t count the number of times their work has graced our publication. I suspected this creative team would produce a Beaufort book to beat all Beaufort books. I was not wrong.

(Note: The following interview was excerpted with permission from the Pat Conroy Literary Center’s blog, Porch Talk. Portions of this interview previously appeared in the inaugural issue of Shrimp, Collards, and Grits magazine.)

Cassandra King is the author of five novels, most recently Moonrise, and the nonfiction book The Same Sweet Girls Guide to Life: Advice from a Failed Southern Belle. This same sweet girl and failed belle from L.A. (Lower Alabama, y’all) famously met her late husband Pat Conroy when he wrote a blurb for her first novel. That circle has now completed itself in her beautiful introduction to Pat’s posthumously published collection of nonfiction A Lowcountry Heart.