Bestselling Novelist Sara Shepard and Teen Actress Lilia Buckingham join Conroy Center for virtual conversation

The nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center will host #1 New York Times best-selling novelist Sara Shepard (Pretty Little Liars) and teen actress and advocate Lilia Buckingham, coauthors of the new novel Influence, a murder mystery set in the glamorous and precarious world of instantly famous social media influencers. Shepard and Buckingham will be in conversation with the Conroy Center's Beaufort High School student intern Holland Perryman and executive director Jonathan Haupt.

This free virtual event will be held on Thursday, February 25, at 7:00 p.m., presented in partnership between the Conroy Center in Beaufort and Blue Bicycle Books of Charleston. Signed copies of Influence are available through Blue Bicycle. Register, donate, and order books at https://eveningwithinfluence.eventbrite.com.

Praise for Influence

"[A] glamorous thriller."—Publishers Weekly

"A timely tale that calls into question the pressures put on young people of influence and how far people are willing to go to get ahead."—Booklist

"Welcome to the glamorous—and cutthroat—world of social media influencers. . . . Glossy and salacious."—Kirkus Reviews

"A peek into a fascinating of-the-moment cultural phenomenon."—School Library Journal

About the Authors

Sara Shepard is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars series, the Perfectionists series, and many more novels for teens and adults. She lives with her family in Pittsburgh. 

Lilia Buckingham is a seventeen-year-old writer, actress, dancer, and student, and social media personality with a following of 1.7M on Instagram. She lives in Los Angeles with her mother, brother, and two dogs. 

About the Hosts

Beaufort High School student Holland Perryman is the first intern of the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center and an award-winning writer whose work has been featured in the Charleston Post and Courier, Lowcountry Weekly, Southern Review of Books, and the anthologies River of Words and Stretching Skyward.

Jonathan Haupt is the Conroy Center’s executive director, coeditor of the award-winning anthology Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy, a book reviewer, a podcast host, and an associate producer of the Telly Award-winning author interview series By the River on ETV. 

Learn more about the year-round educational mission of the Pat Conroy Literary Center at www.patconroyliterarycenter.org. Learn more about Blue Bicycle Books at www.bluebicyclebooks.com.

Pictured, top to bottom: Sara Shepard & Lilia Buckingham