(Note: The following interview was excerpted with permission from the Pat Conroy Literary Center’s blog, Porch Talk. Portions of this interview previously appeared in the inaugural issue of Shrimp, Collards, and Grits magazine.)

Cassandra King is the author of five novels, most recently Moonrise, and the nonfiction book The Same Sweet Girls Guide to Life: Advice from a Failed Southern Belle. This same sweet girl and failed belle from L.A. (Lower Alabama, y’all) famously met her late husband Pat Conroy when he wrote a blurb for her first novel. That circle has now completed itself in her beautiful introduction to Pat’s posthumously published collection of nonfiction A Lowcountry Heart.

The Charles Street Gallery invites you to the opening of “A Serbian Celebration of Art,” featuring the works of Zoran Srbljin and Zoran Kuzmanov. The artists will not be in attendance, but their friends, countrymen and collectors will be! The reception is from 5:30 to 9 pm on Friday, April 21^st, at 914 Charles Street, Beaufort. 843-521-9054.

“Gullah-Geechee Island” is the name of the next Beaufort Art Association (BAA) show, featuring the artwork of local artist Amiri Geuka Farris. The show starts May 1^st and runs through June 30^th, and will feature a “pop-up” shop of a variety of handmade small and medium size pieces of art, as well as t-shirts, postcards and a music CD, all made by Farris.