For a guy that would like to think of himself as non-political, I’m not sure what I expected when I signed up to work on the front lines of America’s political process. Yes, I became a poll manager. Fear not, this column won’t be an idyllic plea like, “Can’t we all just get along?” Perhaps Paul McCartney and the Wingssaid it best, “Live and Let Die.” (Yes, I do feel compelled to work a 007 reference in when I can.)

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. 

By Margaret Evans, Editor

Editor’s Note: I first published this essay four years ago, just before the 2016 election. It’s uncanny – and frankly, unsettling – how timely it still feels. Maybe even more so? Replace “hurricane” with “pandemic” near the end of the piece, and I could have written it yesterday. But like many of you, I’m mentally and spiritually exhausted, and I just didn’t feel like writing yesterday. – Margaret

I can’t count the times I have looked at a plant and said “Oh, I used to have one of those.”  

When I go to that Great Nursery in the Sky, will I be called to account for all the pots I forgot to water, the torture of perennials that had been beaten into submission by weeds, or the failure to put the needs of the plant over my own desires about placement and zone appropriateness? The neglected plants that starved? The forgotten pots that I brought home and never got planted?