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Pat Conroy was born on October 26, 1945, in Atlanta,
Georgia. He often credits his southern mother, a
native of Alabama, for his love of language.
His father was a violent and abusive man, a man
whose biggest mistake, Conroy once said, was
allowing a novelist to grow up in his home, a
novelist “who remembered every single violent act…my
father’s violence is the central fact of my art and
my life.” Since the family had to move many times to
different military bases around the South, Pat
changed schools frequently, finally attending the
Citadel
Military Academy in Charleston, South Carolina, upon
his father’s insistence. While still a student, he
wrote and then published his first book,
The Boo
a tribute to a beloved teacher
After graduation, Conroy taught English in
Beaufort, where he met and married his first wife.
Following the birth of their daughter, the Conroys
moved to Atlanta, where Pat wrote his novel, The
The Great Santini,
published in 1976. The Citadel became the subject of
his next novel, The Lord of Disciplines, published in 1980. The novel exposed the school’s
harsh military discipline, racism and sexism. This
book, too, was made into a feature film.
After a divorce, Pat began anew, remarried and moved
from Atlanta to Rome where he began The Prince of Tides which, when published in 1986, became his
most successful book. Since then, he has written the
bestselling novel, Beach Music, which
established him once and for all as a master of
poetic prose. His most recent work, is an
autobiography, called The Losing Season.
He currently lives in Fripp Island,
South Carolina with his third wife, the novelist
Cassandra King.
For more books by and about
Pat Conroy
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