THE HISTORY OF THE SANTA BARBARA WRITERS CONFERENCE — 1975

An excerpt from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference Scrapbook by Armando Nieto, Mary Conrad, and Matt Pallamary: In 1975 the Santa Barbara Writers Conference opened for the first time at the Miramar Hotel in Montecito, just South of Santa Barbara, beginning a twenty-five year Santa Barbara literary tradition. It was the first year that Charles (Sparky) Schulz came to the SBWC and not only decided to stay the entire week, but became a fixture of the conference, returning and staying for the entire week all the way through to the end of his life in the year 2000. With Sparky's blessing, his Peanuts character Snoopy became the SBWC logo and official conference mascot, and Sparky gave generously of his time and characters without thought of compensation for the next twenty-five years.

 The Last SBWC Banner hanging in Barnaby Conrad's art studio

The SBWC became synonymous with Snoopy typing away on the roof of his doghouse, set on the canvas of a sea of blue roofed cottages glimpsed from the 101 Freeway against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. It was the SBWC at the Miramar Hotel era.

How it came to be held there was because of the Cate School's new headmaster's unwarranted concerns about profitability. Mary Conrad had enough of the school's politics and contacted James Gawzar, a friend whose father owned the Miramar Hotel.

“Can we hold the conference there?” Mary asked.

“Sure,” came the answer from the elder William Gawzar.

With those prophetic words the Miramar Hotel became home to the SBWC for a quarter of a century, and birthed more stories than can be included in this volume of the history of the SBWC, or which the lawyers will allow us to relate, but it would not be a true reflection of the history if the book did not contain a generous sprinkling of the tales birthed and passed on along the way.

THE HISTORY OF THE SANTA BARBARA WRITERS CONFERENCE — 1974

An excerpt from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference Scrapbook by Armando Nieto, Mary Conrad, and Matt Pallamary: A short distance South of Santa Barbara, the 2^nd Annual SBWC got underway with Ray Bradbury as Keynote Speaker, Kenneth Rexroth conducting a poetry workshop, and Mel Torme promoting his new book, “I’d Rather Write than Sing.”

Building on the success of the first year, the Conrads produced a line-up of speakers that would be the envy of any well-established conference:

Budd Schulberg showed his landmark film, “On the Waterfront.” James Michener (Hawaii, the Pulitzer Prize winning Tales of the South Pacific and others), gave an evening address and Mel Torme explained why “I’d Rather Write Than Sing.”

Ross MacDonald (Ken Millar) spoke about “Writing, Mystery & Suspense,” and the afternoon speakers included Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem and others), John Gregory Dunne (Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season and others), Alex Haley (Roots), Clifton Fadiman (Mathematical Magpie and others), and James Sheldon (radio broadcaster, “We, The People”).

By the end of the conference the SBWC had become an institution in Santa Barbara County, and in the world of writers and conferences, but not everyone was convinced.

After the second conference in 1974, Barnaby’s boyhood friend Headmaster Clark left Cate School and the new headmaster was concerned that the school was losing money on the deal the previous headmaster had made with the Conrads.

As a result of the new headmaster's erroneous impressions of the conference, the SBWC moved to the Miramar Hotel in 1975.

THE HISTORY OF THE SANTA BARBARA WRITERS CONFERENCE — 1973

An excerpt from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference Scrapbook by Armando Nieto, Mary Conrad, and Matt Pallamary: Held from June 22nd to June 29th, the first Santa Barbara Writers Conference featured Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, and others), Clifton Fadiman (The Mathematical Magpie, and others), Ross MacDonald (The Zebra-Striped Hearse, the Chill, and others), Don Freeman (A Rainbow of My Own, Corduroy, and others), John Leggett (Ross and Tom: Two American Tragedies, and others), Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront), Niels Mortensen (Endangered, with Barnaby Conrad), and Jessica “Decca” Mitford (Hons and Rebels, The American Way of Death, and others), and Jerry Hannah.

In total there were six workshop leaders and 37 students.

By the second night, Bill Downey wrote, “You could tell the students by the glazed look in their eyes.” Their countenances were attributed to the Pirate Workshops, a device invented of necessity. Rather than lying awake with comments and critiques from the published writers torturing their sleep, students stayed up most of the night reading and re-working the endings or beginnings of their Great American Novels to each other, and those workshop leaders young enough to participate without a full night’s sleep.

It was a grand experiment off to a promising start, if only in the minds of the conference organizers and attendees, but the experience was successful enough to encourage Ray Bradbury and others to return the next year, because unlike most writers conferences, there was something tangibly different from other conferences. When they made their way from the Cate School Campus each looked forward to the next year, as if to a beloved family gathering. Thus began a long-standing tradition of Ray Bradbury making the opening remarks every year until failing health caused him to miss the annual event in 2005.

Barny, Ray Bradbury, and friends

[audio mp3="http://www.sbwriters.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Ray-Bradbury-2002.mp3"][/audio]

Words of wisdom from Ray Bradbury

THE HISTORY OF THE SANTA BARBARA WRITERS CONFERENCE — 1986

An excerpt from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference Scrapbook by Armando Nieto, Mary Conrad, and Matt Pallamary: The following news clipping from May 31 1986 was published prior to the 14th annual Santa Barbara Writers Conference which took place from June 20-27, 1986. By then, the SBWC was fully established in the cottages and confines under the landmark blue roofs of the Miramar Hotel in Montecito, where legends were both celebrated and created.

Over the space of a quarter of a century, for one magical week a year the SBWC took over the old fashioned resort and became a world unto itself. There was a piano bar where you might walk in to find Steve Allen, Barnaby Conrad, or Cliff, the black house piano man tickling the ivories, and a long hallway that connected the registration desk to the bar and restaurant, aptly nicknamed "Peacock Alley" where people strutted their stuff, and a huge conference hall where the keynoters spoke.

In a smaller hall nestled beneath the main hall, Pirate Workshops were held after the evening speaker, ending when the last person read, almost always after midnight, and often into the wee hours of the morning. Night or day that setting was bordered by the Pacific Ocean and the beautiful Miramar beach front facing cottages, with tennis courts, and railroad tracks that sent locomotives and rattling box cars through the middle of the property at all hours of the day and night, past a stationary railroad club car restaurant beside the tracks. It was a perfect setting for a gathering of creative talent of all levels and genres, all dedicated to nurturing and celebrating their shared love of writing with varying degrees of angst, anger, fear, passion, and hope.

THE HISTORY OF THE SANTA BARBARA WRITERS CONFERENCE — 2004

An excerpt from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference Scrapbook by Armando Nieto, Mary Conrad, and Matt Pallamary: 2004 was the last year that the Conrads owned the SBWC and it was the conference's last year at Westmont College.

Gayle Lynds who is one of this year's keynoters for 2017, was a keynoter that year.

“I am here,” Gayle stated, “to talk about plotting, because Barnaby asked me.” She directed the students to look in their SBWC packets for The Writer Magazine. “There’s an article written by a very fine writer — the one with plotting, or plotting a thriller or plotting suspense, or something like that — with interviews written by Julian Abbott. Interviews with me, and Dennis Lehane, and Stuart Woods, and so Barnaby took it into his head that it would be a good thing for me to talk about.”

Gayle talked with the audience about her experience plotting and said that everything has a plot. “Even when they say it doesn’t have a plot, it’s got a plot.” She read from a 1939-40 book by Jack Woodford that discussed plotting. He wrote that in any other profession you can put relatives to work, but novels require a special skillset.

“‘Publishers’ relatives can’t write them. No matter how devoted the publisher is to his relatives, he can’t chisel them in on this one profession. It’s an honor left fairly free from nepotism.

"‘Of course publishers’ relatives do write novels, or have them written by ghost writers, but it’s one place where the nepotism game won’t really work, because you’ve got to have some brains to be a writer, and relatives never have brains. All the brains in the family run to one guy, in a given generation.’”

Gayle spoke again about the difference between a thriller and a mystery. She used the same Alfred Hitchcock example of a bomb place underneath a table that Andrew Klavan had used the previous day, “but I want to come to it from another direction.” She used the example of 9/11 in 2001 — acknowledging that it was a terrible event, but that in a thriller the story would start a few days before 9/11, perhaps with the terrorists preparing for the planes crashing, then build up to the moment of the crashes.

For this particular lecture she took the time to give the subtleties of plotting and story elements, interweaving her personal experience with the novels that she has written. “Two key words, for any novelist, are, What if?”

This was how she created a second novel to follow up on an earlier one. For years her publishers were after her to do a sequel, but Gayle could not see the story until finally she had her character go back to school and start a new way of life. At this point she admonished the audience to be in love with the story, because if they weren’t, then they could not credibly write for their audience, and once she came up with the new life for her character, she needed to develop plot elements to move the character into and through the story.