Will sign books. She will leave here and go directly there and it would be great if you would let her get there. We have a new policy. If you are planning to stay for the next author presentation please move forward in the church as the venue empties so that the ushers can accurately count available seats. In years past we ask you to leave, today we ask you to step forward. Please take a minute to turn off your cell phones. I know you think you did but please do. We also ask that you do not use flash photography. For the question and answer portion another change. Please raise your hand and the ushers will bring the microphone to you. Cassandra king is with us today courtesy of john and melanie, Cassandra King is author of five novels, most recently the critically acclaimed moonrise with her literary homage to rebecca. Moonrise was a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance bestseller. Cassandra king is joining us to say to commemorate pat conroy, a leading figure in the 20th century southern literature, conroy has influenced a generation of writers and moved readers in and out of the low country with his unforgettable pros. Another time a der friend virginia died in deaf friend was going actually it was barbara that he will about in his essay in this book. And i was not able to attend as a had to fly from something and could not go so pat was going to drive up to the Memorial Service while he was giving a big award in colombias South Carolina at the college so i thought i had learned my lesson. I practice clothes practice clothes and make takeshi of paper and there wrote on South Carolina and put them in the back of the trump. He left in his khakis and his tshirt fortunately it was cold so he had his sports jacket. He had back problems so lot of times i would get the suitcases. Sure enough to bring in his suitcase after he had returned home from this presentation. Still hanging over the suitcase were the hangars was the note which he had not done. Os i saidt you have war in this for three days into her service . He said was i supposed to . Said he was very endearing. The one more story. Then we will take some questions. This is one of my favorites in did involves his dearbu friend berniefo and bernie is s a whole story in himself in any of his pat works his friend appears in a lot of them. Bernie is the most outrageous person that has ever lived so them to gather is a total food to. I thought so until this, yo happened. So last couple, of years ofuld pats life he had given up some of his bad habits. Instead of having a cocktail he took up another bad habita ro and would have a cigar every afternoon sitting on the porch. Day upstairs porch that we have in our house. The little smoking porch. Pdf they would have these wonderful discussions. I would have a little daybed were i would work it would be right by the windows and they are right above me and i would love to hear because they both had big allows. Small this but they would always have a great conversation and he did discussions so i couple of summers ago i had a rough[lau summer with some Health Problems i was not feeling well at all. But later that afternoon i got really sick and i started to perspire which i never do since i ma southern belle. Something was very wrong. So i sat down on my bed i could hear them up there. So i called him. Patch. Bernie. Pat. They could not hear me because of their big mouth. [laughter] i could have called pat butbe he never had hisrn phone so i just called 911 because i thought i was dying. [laughter] they sent six paramedics these huge men with huge muscles to hook me of to all of these machines are you by yourself . Like has been this upstairs. N they go looking they are in, ha the corners of the dulce them. He comes back down and i did not know this until later so they carry me off. R] about two hours later it gets dark bernie goes home and pat comes down looking for me. [laughter]womaive and he looks. Allaround and it is dark. So he calls bernie did sandra go home with few . [lau [laughter] he said no. Why . Because i cannot find her anywhere. Burkhart is out there. Ghte he said i will help you look. So bernie and pat are going through the neighborhood call in for me and we live on a creekthin so pat said she has committed suicide. [laughter] finally i knew i would never have a happy marriage that she jumped in the creek. Bernie said i am calling 911. [laughter] he says shes not here sheen h has to be somewhere. He calls 911 and said the as we picked her up she is in the emergency room and has been here a couple of hours. [laughter] it gets better. Member he is totally incompetent with his wardrobe he had never driven this car before it iss raining. He turns on the lights and not the windshield wipers so he rolls down the window and sticks his head out to drive to the hospital and lets bernie out to find a place to park. Ue and when he goes inside hehe wife is here she was brought by ambulance the man says no, her husband is back there with her now. [laughter]e wo he said get him out of their. So that was life with pat. Never a dull moment even when i was dying. [laughter] i would love to hear whatould you want to know about that and about our life together and is writing and open up theehe 44 questions. Your most cherished guessth whether theyin are words or did tokens of remembrance fromome him to use. My most cherished gaffes are these wonderful little notes keyboard right to me. Some are hilarious. He had a nickname for me he says they know it sounds cool but if you knew her youou would see why i call her that because i am fromrds, alabama he would call me helen keller all the time because i said nothing and heard nothing and sawy. Nothing. [laughter] u and that worked out well for him because he could not blame me for anything he would say helen keller did not tell me. People would look at him like he was crazy. Some of them will look strange his papers have been given to the South CarolinaLibrary Including the helen keller love notes. 50 [laughter] that will get some biographer one of these days. And his beautiful words i will always cherish those. We were classmates and never copied of that magazine where he was the poetry director and he has to pull limbs in their the elaborate to give to you. [applause] but laszlo also ask you to speak to some of thew. Wonderful things that he wrote about the citadel later in his life. If i knew of any of them i was. [laughter] he did. Ine bal, is that they had [inaudible] yes, they did. And it was, they had a lot of these people were there. [inaudible] in the church [inaudible] yes. Yes, yes. And that was just so, that really, really touched me. But, yeah. He made up with the citadel. He had a, he had a great time with them. He might have missed with em, but i think hed gotten that out of his system. Whoa, im getting waved over here. Ive got ten minutes . Okay. [inaudible] whats my Favorite Book of his and why. I have, i love each of them for different reasons. That is not a, so much a diplomatic answer as a really true first one i read is the waters wide, and oh, my goodness, i still love that book and will always love it. I guess if i had, if i had to only have one, it would be the prince of tides, because that just has everything, you know . Its so beautiful. Its so beautiful. Okay. I would, first, like to add a plug in for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network research, and if anybody could make donations to them, i lost my mother to that also. Secondly, i ran into pat right after his 70th Birthday Party in a hotel lobby when he was trying to steal my husbands newspaper. [laughter] and and so i went up and, of course, i bowed to his feet [laughter] and then i apologized to him for not being able to make the party as my father was passing away at that time, and he said, oh, dont worry about it. He goes, it was horrible. There were just these damn famous people there, and my family, and you wouldnt have wanted to talk to any of em. [laughter] yep. He was humble and very down to earth, and thank you for sharing a part of him with us. Thank you. [applause] matt. Thank you, cassandra. Its good to see you back. You were in that [inaudible] for the very first festival, and a lot of people have shared wishes with me having to do with the tenth anniversary. And you and pat were both huge, huge to quote our president , huge [laughter] be contributors to the success of this thing. And i always related to one of pats less well known books, the water is wide. Because my father, born in 1900 in carroll county, georgia, which might as well have been 1800 in missouri, loved his students just like pat loved his. And he didnt give a damn about the organization. He would, he would teach classes as a School Superintendent at every opportunity. I was interested when pat spoke here in that same spot about as fraught as his relationship with the citadel was, he was published by citadel people. And he related the story of his first offer from a publisher. The stories around pat conroy are amazing, and youve shared so many of them today, but ill never forget the editor in new york who said, pat, this is the cutest thing [laughter] how did he come to get his first manuscript typed . He didnt write it it was written longhand, and that was not acceptable. How did he manage to get a presentable manuscript put together . He always told, and this has been verified by other people, that he just, his first wife, barbara, and he just took chapters all around to anybody they knew that had a typewriter and would be willing to type it. [laughter] and so it ended up some of it typed on their personal stationery and, you know, some of it on so it was a very odd assortment of love. Im so sorry that has not survived, that first manuscript. I dont think it has, has it, jonathan . Can i just tell real quickly why i keep referring to jonathan over here, get in a plug . To honor pat, we have just recently opened the pat conroy literary center. Please come see us in buford. [applause] weve got our First Program next monday night, and jonathan is here, and he is our new director. He was the former director of the university of South Carolina press. So we are very, very fortunate to have, have jonathan. And he was instrumental in getting pats archives to the South Carolina libraries and so forth. So thats, you know, hes sort of my builtin, you know, google over here. [laughter] okay. We have one, one more . Two more, a couple more. One more. I enjoyed pats cookbook. How much did he really cook . Well, glad you asked, im glad you asked that because im writing a cookbook memoir now, and its going to be about mine and pats life together and our, some of our cooking experiences. I want this to be a really light kind of book with the kind of stories i told you today. He, when we first married, he was doing most of the cooking, and weve got huge families on both sides. So we were having 25 people, dinner, you know, that was nothing unusual. So i was glad to turn the cooking over to pat, trust me. But pat, one thing everybody says about pat and i totally agree with, he was larger than life. Thats what you think of when you think of pat be in so many ways. His personality, his writing, you know, he was just a largerthanlife kind of person. He was the same way with his cooking. He could not i mean, he made huge dishes, but he wouldnt eat leftovers. [laughter] so some of you know, you know, the problem thats coming there. So i sort of began to take over the cooking [laughter] you know, a little bit especially as he tried to get healthier because pat could not cook without heavy cream, butter, and his favorites bacon, bacon drippings, you know . [laughter] which, of course, the most delicious, heavy cream, butter, bay caron grease, whats bacon grease. Whats worse for you, you know . So i got him healthier, and the only way i could do it really was just to take up the cooking, which i did. And it was but we had, we had a lot of fun cooking together and having dinner parties together and so forth. Thank yall so very much. [applause] upon exiting the venue, our wonderful volunteers will enthusiastically accept your donations to the savannah book festival. It is because of your generosity that we are able to keep festival saturday free. Also ms. King will be signing at the book tent the festivalpurchased copies of her book. She would love to see you there, im sure. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] and this is booktv on cspan2, live coverage of the tenth anniversary of the savannah book festival. That was Cassandra King who is the widow of novelist and bestseller pat conroy talking about his last book, a lowcountry heart, and shes now headed out into the square in downtown savannah right outside the church to sign books. Several more authors are coming up including terry mcdonnell, his book is called the accidental life. Hes a former editor of Rolling Stone and esquire, and he talks about how he came into that position, what its like to work on deadline, those types of things. So hell be coming up in about 15 minutes or so. In the meantime though, since cassandra can king was speaking about her late husband, pat conroy, who died in march of 2016, we thought wed show you some booktv archival video of mr. Conroy. We covered him a couple of different times. Now, he is a novelist, so its not one that we usually would cover, but here he is from 2015 talking about the writing process, talking about being a southerner, etc. Heres a little bit of the late pat conroy. I was eating in buford the other day, there was a group of women eating. Obviously, theyre in the same office. And theyre and they were laughing their behind off. And when i was near enough, i could hear them talking about their boss. And so another story, these women, there was about ten of them. And theyre screaming laughing about this boss. And his idiosin rah sayses. Idiosin rah says. Five of the women were black, five were white, and it tickled me just to see it. And i was eating dinner with a friend of mine from new york. And she said, what are you laughing about . I said, that would have been illegal when i first came to buford. She said, oh, youre always exaggerating, what do you mean, illegal . I said, no, no, they would have been arrested because, you know, blacks could not eat in this restaurant. She says, what restaurant were they eating in . I said, i dont think they could eat in any restaurant. I didnt know a black restaurant in buford. And so ive watched so many changes come over from the Civil Rights Movement in the south. I got i watched that. I got to see it. And it was amaz, because there was a time i thought the south would never change, could not change. Then what do we have, i thought, okay, i have seen the light, i have a good life going on until my untimely death, and the Womens Liberation Movement comes roaring around the country. Did yall know that one was coming . [laughter] and i saw a few of the girls that graduated from high school with me not long ago, we had lunch, and they remembered what girls were told they could do. Now, boys, we were told the world. We could go out and conquer the world; astronauts, go to the moon. The girls were told they could go out, they could be secretaries, they could be nurses, they could be librarians, they could be teachers, and they could be the most wonderful of all vocations, they could be mothers. [laughter] and im sitting, and some of these women are ceos. Some of these women have done extraordinary things. Big law firms in columbia. These women who have done amazingly well, and the women have done at least as well as the men of my class. So oh, by the way, the south continuing to change, how many people thought you would see gay marriage in the south in your lifetime . You know . And i dont know what im going to see before i die. [laughter] i mean, i just have no idea. But it certainly has been interesting, and i didnt predict any of it. It has been all fascinating. And and i like the way the southerner figures it out. I like the way the southerner, you know, i went to a gay wedding not long ago, and the grandparents it was interesting talking to the grandparents. [laughter] weve always loved billy. [laughter] and we still love and i said, and johnny is such a nice boy. [laughter] so i just like, you know, the south, its interesting to me, ive liked watching it since ive been alive. Im sorry. No, i totally agree. s katherine [inaudible] do not be ashamed. Where are her children . [laughter] stand up so i can see yall. Oh, there he is. [applause] pat go ahead, go ahead. [laughter] this is an attempt to derail he from the tough questions. Im back, im back. [laughter] so let me ask you about writing about charleston now. As you said, the south has changed, and has your writing about it changed . Has the way you view it changed . Has the way you situate this novel thats in progress right now changed . You know, i think the most powerful thing that has happened to me as a person that loves charleston was this recent killing of the nine parishioners at the Temple EmanuelAfrican Methodist Episcopal Church in charleston where a young white kid goes in with a gun. And i think most shocking, he sat9 down and listened to the service. And the service was about god, and the service of god. And then nine people are shot. And i think for the first time South Carolina could grieve in one voice, white, black, everybody could grieve together in the same horror. Each race was just as horrified as the other. And the, you know, aching inability to make sense out of that, to make religious sense or spiritual sense out of that thing was one of the most Amazing Things ive ever opinion through in charleston. Ever been through in charleston. I want to ask you a little bit more about the new novel just because people ask me about it a lot. People are excited about it. But i want to ask about it from a different angle now about your process, about your writing process. Because thats something that ive thought a lot about in regard to how you do it, but i think it interests all of us who are not writers because it seems sort of magical to us. And the way pat writes is particularly magical. His papers are now available at the university of South Carolinas library, the archives there, and he writes entirely in longhand. And to look at these pads of paper is really to see something unbelievable because there are not a lot of things that are scratched out, there are not a lot of notes in the margins, there are not missing pages from the legal pad. The books emerge in full voice, fully realized. And my real question, of course, is how do you do that. [laughter] but id like to ask, i guess more generally, about your writing process. And maybe about how youre approaching it right now with this, with this novel. One of the processes in writing is i try to at least have a beginning. And i have found that theres usually somebody narrating thats a lot like me. My sister says the narrator is always some wonderful, lifeaffirming, fabulous [laughter] young man out of the south who has a hideous family. [laughter] unspeakable sisters and brothers. [laughter]