Nancy Thode is a family psychotherapist, a mother of two and grandmother of five, and longtime chair of the Gatherings Committee at Christ Church Greenwich. But a conversation in the late 1990s with novelist Pat Conroy planted a seed she couldn't ignore.

Conroy sat in Thode's living room on Fripp Island, South Carolina, reminiscing about her mother and lamenting that her work had faded from view, according to a Southern Literary Review account of the book. Then he told her: "You should write about your mother."

The words stayed with her.

Thode, a longtime Greenwich resident now based in Stamford, finally wrote that book. Ahead of Her Time: The Trailblazing Life and Literary Legacy of Ann Head won a Silver Medal in the Biography category at the 2026 Independent Publisher Book Awards, announced June 24. The IPPY Awards, now in their 30th year, recognize excellence in independent and self-published books through a panel of librarians, booksellers, reviewers and designers.

The biography tells the story of Thode's mother, Ann Head, a Beaufort, South Carolina, writer who published more than 50 works and supported herself and her daughter entirely through her pen after divorcing inventor Howard Head, creator of Head Skis and the Prince oversized tennis racquet. Ann Head's best-known novel, Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones (1967), became a bestseller, was adapted into a film and remained on school reading lists for more than 50 years. A presentation by the Pat Conroy Literary Center credited the book with helping create the Young Adult genre.

Ann Head also taught a creative writing course at Beaufort High School, where a teenage Pat Conroy was her student. Conroy would visit her home after school to talk about writing. He later wrote in his autobiography about the influence she had on his life and career.

In an interview with the Post and Courier, Thode described discovering boxes of her mother's papers, including more than 50 published magazine stories she hadn't known about and three years of post-divorce letters between her parents. The biography includes more than 20 pages of previously unpublished correspondence between Head and the young Conroy, featuring his early poems and letters of admiration. In one handwritten note to Thode, Conroy wrote: "Nancy, I wrote this in your mother's class. Why she thought I had a smidgen of talent remains a mystery."

The project didn't begin in earnest until around 2017, when Harlan Greene, head of Special Collections at Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston, contacted Thode about donating her mother's papers. Greenwich Free Press reported on the award Aug. 19.

In 2020, Thode established the Ann Head Literary Award for Short Story Fiction at Beaufort High School. In 2024, Ann Head was inducted into the South Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.

Thode divides her time between Stamford and Fripp Island. Ahead of Her Time is published by Evening Post Books of Charleston and is available, as Greenwich Free Press noted, through Dogwood Books online and at eveningpostbooks.com.