Lowcountry Weekly is pleased to announce the winners of the 6th Annual Sea Island Spirit Writers Short Story Contest. This year’s participation was amazing; we more than doubled the number of submissions! Writers were asked to include the phrase "torn scraps of paper" in a story limited to 750 words. The stories were judged by members of the Sea Island Spirit Writers, including Donna Armer, Katherine Tandy Brown, Deb Duer, Virginia Hall-Apicella, Ellen Kelley, and June Labyzon. They tell us the competition was fierce.

The Beaufort native will appear in the Pat Conroy Literary Festival on November 7

With six acclaimed novels already to her credit, Beaufort native Valerie Sayers has recently released a first collection of stories, The Age of Infidelity, which span from the Due East in the 1960s (the familiar southern setting of much of her fiction) into speculative visions of the future. Once a high school psychology student of famed writer Pat Conroy, Valerie was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the Palmetto State’s literary hall of fame, in 2018 (just as Conroy had been honored thirty years prior). She will return to Beaufort, albeit virtually, as a workshop instructor and presenting author in the 5^thannual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, this November 7. (Learn more about the festival in the full-page ad in this issue or at https://conta.cc/3izeBPh.) 

Valerie discussed all of that—plus some vital lessons she has learned from her students and teachers—in this recent email interview. 

“This is a work of fiction. However, with a single exception (and as outrageous as some of them may sound) all the incidents described here really happened”… Thus begins the Author’s Note introducing The Chronicles of Willow Point, a new novel by Beaufort’s E.T. Baysden. The following is an excerpt from that novel...