Gone With the Wind

Donald Patrick Conroy's pen name is Pat Conroy. He was born on October 26, 1945, in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from The Citadel in 1967 with B.A. in English. He later used his experiences at the strict school in his book, The Lords of Discipline (1980), which was nominated for the Robert Kennedy Book Award in 1981. After teaching high school at his alma mater, he accepted a job teaching disadvantaged black children in a two-room schoolhouse on Daufuskie Island off the South Carolina coast. Many of the children were illiterate, unable even to write their own names. He taught them using oral history and geography lessons. His experience on Daufuskie Island formed the basis for his first successful novel The Water Is Wide (1972), which won Conroy the Anisfield-Wolf Award from the Cleveland Foundation and was made into the movie Conrack starring Jon Voight in 1976. His other novels include The Great Santini, The Prince of Tides, Beach Music, and South of Broad.