The 45th Annual Santa Barbara Writers Conference opens on June 18 -- less than three weeks away!
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If your schedule or budget does not allow you to attend the full conference, please consider signing up for a partial conference.
Beginning June 1, you may register online for:
$125 for a day
Available for online registration now:
$575 student rate (email info@ sbwriters.com for promo code)
$650 for full 6-day conference
To register: http://www.sbwriters.com/conference/
For more information: info@sbwriters.com
Group rates available too.
THE HISTORY OF THE SANTA BARBARA WRITERS CONFERENCE — 1981
An excerpt from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference Scrapbook by Armando Nieto, Mary Conrad, and Matt Pallamary:
Judith Kranz joined the list of featured speakers in 1981, and talked about writing Scruples and Princess Daisy. Saying that she was too busy at work on a new-not-to-be-revealed-novel to prepare a speech, she entertained the afternoon audience with tips on fashion as well as how she managed to pen two successful books, and how she handled the sex scenes.
Ms. Kranz reported that she had not realized how erotic the sex scenes in Scruples appeared to the American public when she started her book tour, so she decided that there would be no four letter words in Princess Daisy.
“And I think those sex scenes were better than Scruples,” she stated. “Writers have to feel comfortable with the words, just as readers do.”
One of the more fascinating speakers that year was Barbara Goldsmith, who spent five years researching her book, Little Gloria…. Happy at Last. Ms. Goldsmith was already an accomplished writer and editor when she came across a reference in research for her Straw Man book project to the proceedings of Vanderbilt vs. Vanderbilt.
With persistence she was able to access previously sealed court documents including 80,000 pages of testimony, details, and conversations related to the case. The Politics of 1934 were the historic background for the court case, and for her book, Little Gloria… Happy at Last.
THE HISTORY OF THE SANTA BARBARA WRITERS CONFERENCE — 1980
An excerpt from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference Scrapbook by Armando Nieto, Mary Conrad, and Matt Pallamary:
William Styron was back, overheard at the Conrad’s party to say, “I love California in a perverse and unique way. It always seems both non-American and more American than America.”
Though the star-studded parties were in full swing, the real action remained at the Miramar Hotel. 1980 was the year William Styron told the conference how he came to write Sophie’s Choice which held the number one spot on the best-seller list for 47 weeks.
“In the early ‘70s I fell into that moment of creative impotence in which something goes haywire with the creative process, and one struggles and struggles with the obdurate word, with the intransigent paragraphs, with the hopelessly unyielding sentence, word, comma — and one wants to give it all up and go to Peru and fish sardines or something like that — anything but write.”
Questions from the assembled writers poked into those places most personal to any writer, such as, “You talk a lot about loneliness.” Styron said he didn’t think there was any way out of it — “Its self-flagellation.” and “was ‘Nathan’ (a principle in Sophie’s Choice) based on someone you knew?” Nathan was based on a composite of people he knew.
Students at the SBWC wanted to know everything about writing, and the smorgasbord of authors at the conference provided many opportunities to learn from masters in many fields.
Flyer for Santa Barbara Writers Conference
THE HISTORY OF THE SANTA BARBARA WRITERS CONFERENCE — 1979
An excerpt from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference Scrapbook by Armando Nieto, Mary Conrad, and Matt Pallamary:
The 1979 conference was dedicated to Erskine Caldwell, the shy and low-profile writer of Tobacco Road and God’s Little Acre whose 50 books had been translated into 43 languages with a circulation of an estimated 80,000,000 copies in print.
Earlier in his career Mr. Caldwell was anything but shy when the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice instigated legal action against him, bringing about his arrest when he attended a book-signing for God’s Little Acre in New York. With his exoneration at trial, the novel The Bastard was deemed “not obscene” by Magistrate Greenspan. Caldwell promptly counter-sued for false arrest and malicious prosecution.
Barnaby met Erskine Caldwell when they both resided in San Francisco, joining with one another in the fecund hotbed of writers who comprised the Bay Area writing community, and who also frequented Barnaby’s El Matador Bar. When the Conrads moved to Carpinteria, Caldwell made his way to Paradise Valley, Arizona, where he lived until his death on April 11, 1987.
Deemed so by James Michener, the SBWC was “now known as the best [conference] in the nation,” and the Santa Barbara and Montecito society circles took notice.
Friends of Mary and Barnaby Conrad held parties in conjunction with the SBWC, including Mrs. Leinie Schilling of the Schilling Spice fortune. Attendees to Leinie’s legendary Mexican Buffet supper included workshop leaders, speakers, and visiting writers who met permanent and part time local residents including Jane Russell, Robert Mitchum, John Ireland, Dame Judith Anderson, and Priscilla Presley, but, as with Mary Conrad’s fabled cocktail party for friends of the SBWC in their Rincon home, the Leinie Schilling and every other SBWC associated party had a sharp curfew of 7:30 pm when party attendees were encouraged to “drink up and eat up” because the evening speaker started the lecture at 8:00 pm. Setting a good example, by that point Mary herself was absent from the festivities, ensconced at a table in the entrance to the Miramar Conference Center, checking name badges or collecting admission fees.
1979 marked the seventh year in a row that the Conrads convened the SBWC which had grown from 36 students and 7 workshop leaders and speakers, to 175 students and 31 speakers and workshop leaders.
THE HISTORY OF THE SANTA BARBARA WRITERS CONFERENCE — 1978
An excerpt from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference Scrapbook by Armando Nieto, Mary Conrad, and Matt Pallamary:
A newcomer to the SBWC in 1978, Colleen McCullough was riding a wave of publicity for The Thorn Birds which included a $1.9 million price tag for the paperback rights. “I worked on it for five years,” McCullough said of The Thorn Birds. “I rewrote the whole thing 10 times. Whole chapters were added and dropped, new characters were created and others were ‘unborn.’ I stayed up for four or five days in a row sometimes without sleeping at all.”
Like Colleen, for some, it wasn’t about the money and glamour. In fact she shocked conference attendees and guests by saying, “I hate the book. I’m not just saying that — I hate it [The Thorn Birds] with a passion.
“I think it’s flat, dull, uninteresting, ghastly, and a complete embarrassment to me. I can’t see any virtue in it at all.”
As incredible as that may sound, it is exactly those kind of insights into the life and craft of writing that many conferees came back to glean from the conference workshop leaders, speakers, and published authors.
For many, there was something deeply moving about such raw honesty delivered succinctly, and although Ms. McCullough was featured speaker on the first full day of the conference, the audience felt her pain as if they’d already spent a week baring their own souls, scars, and open sores to the creative process. In truth, all writers share that toll that writing takes — some just wear their experiences more gently.
Congrats!!! SBWC Scholarship Contest Results
Dear Writers,
Thank you to those of you who entered our annual writing contest. After reviewing a massive stack of entries from all over the United States and Canada, we’d like to congratulate our 3 winners and 3 runners-up.
There were many excellent entries…but there could only be so many winners.
Winners: Full scholarships to SBWC 2017
Mikko K. Cook Kim Cromwell Jeff Wing
Runners-up: Partial scholarships to SBWC 2017
Joy Allen Lorie Brallier Ann Doyle
Finalists: Entitled to a free agent appointment if they desire, and if they are able to attend SBWC 2017.
Claire Hsu Accomando Sharon Brown Suzanne Cardinal Christina Gessler Cherie Kephart Nancy Klann
We appreciate every writer who took a chance and submitted writing to be considered. We know that is an act of bravery.
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” — Ernest Hemingway
There were many excellent entries, but the above writers were the ones who, this time, around rose to the top with this year’s judges.
Congratulations, all. Grace Rachow
SBWC Director
