Authors on the Air host Pam Stack is honored to welcome Jonathan Haupt, Executive Director of the PAT CONROY LITERARY CENTER in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Kentucky-born Jonathan Haupt, 43, has forged a distinguished career in literary arts leadership in his adopted home of South Carolina. Since 2011, he has served as Director of the University of South Carolina Press. Under Haupt’s leadership, USC Press was honored with a South Carolina Governors Award in the Humanities, given in recognition of the Press’s commitment to education through humanities publishing. In 2013, he established the Press’s acclaimed Story River Books fiction imprint, edited by Pat Conroy and named by Garden & Gun magazine as one of the top ten things to love about the South. His directorship at USC Press has been defined by a consistent commitment to serving the interests of writers and readers in and beyond South Carolina.

Haupt created and co-chaired the Pat Conroy at 70 Festival in October 2015, an immersive literary event that was equal parts birthday celebration, book festival, writers conference, film festival, civic pride ceremony, community outreach program, and family reunion. Following Conroy’s death, Haupt remade the festival as the Pat Conroy Literary Festival, which will be the Center’s signature annual event..

Newly elected to the board of governors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors (the Palmetto State’s literary hall of fame), Haupt has also served on the boards of the South Carolina Book Festival, Deckle Edge Literary Festival, One Columbia for Arts and History, and Columbia’s One Book, One Community.. With Charleston writer Nicole Seitz he is editing an anthology of essays by 70 writers sharing their remembrances of Pat Conroy.