Fireside Chat with John Warley, JD

Reservations are open online now (at Dataw.com website) or by calling the Member Services Desk at (843) 838-8282.

$32++ per person includes: Spinach Salad, Braised Short Rib Dinner, and Pecan Pie

~ Member Signature Bar will also be available ~

After dinner, our feature speaker is author John Warley, JD.

John is a Lowcountry resident and a celebrated author of five novels and one work of non-fiction. John will talk about his ancestor, John “Tuscarora Jack” Barnwell (1671 – 1724), a local hero of both the Yamasee and Tuscarora Indian wars. Col John Barnwell was a grandfather to William Sams (1741 – 1798).

Here is John Warley’s biography from Amazon.com:

In my early 40s, I felt the need for a passion I’d lost in the practice of law. Writing filled that need, and I’ve been doing a lot of it ever since. I wrote my first novel between 4 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. It took a year, and when I finished, I wasn’t sure I hadn’t wasted my time.

So I sent it to Pat Conroy, my Citadel classmate and baseball teammate from the class of 1967. I figured Pat knew a thing or two about writing, given the success of books like The Prince of Tides. Pat loved my book and asked my permission to send it to his agent, which I gave (duh?) His agent, one of New York’s best, signed me up, predicting a major trade hardcover and a film deal. That turned out to be a bit optimistic, but I still believe Bethesda’s Child is a fine novel.

In 2014, Story River Books, an imprint of the University of South Carolina Press, published A Southern Girl, my novel inspired by the adoption of my Korean daughter into a conservative Southern family. Pat Conroy deemed it “as stylish as a novel by John Irving and as tightly written as one by John Grisham. I wish I’d written this book.” I’ve been gratified by the reviews and sales of that book. In March 2018, Evening Post Books published my history of The Citadel entitled Stand Forever, Yielding Never; The Citadel in the 21st Century.

I’m a native South Carolinian, a graduate of The Citadel and the University of Virginia School of Law. I practiced law in Virginia until 1993 when I moved to Mexico to write and teach. Now a full-time writer, I divide my time between Beaufort, South Carolina, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.