Santa Barbara Writers Conference on Hiatus This Year
Organizers Are Already Putting Together Plans For 2026 Event
The Santa Barbara Writers Conference (SBWC) will not take place in 2025. Conference participants and followers received a New Year’s Day email stating that the 2025 SBWC will be on hiatus due to unforeseen circumstances.
“We understand many of you are looking forward to attending the Santa Barbara Writers Conference this June. I’d like to invite you to readjust your focus to June 2026,” wrote SBWC Director Grace Rachow. “Due to unforeseen circumstances, we will not have a regular conference in June 2025. The next SBWC will be in June 2026. So you’ll have an extra year to finish your current writing project … or get a new one well down the road.”
When more information was requested, Rachow shared that, “there are already plans afoot for some alternative 2025 events by SBWC devotees and we will be supporting all the great ideas and help make them happen. It might amount to an SBWC family reunion in June, as well as some special events or workshops throughout the year. People seem ready and eager to make some plans.”
Rachow said that she and conference owner Monte Schulz have been working on plans to keep the conference — which was founded in 1973 by Mary and Barnaby Conrad and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023 (read the Independent story here) — going well into the future. Schulz, a novelist, has deep ties to SBWC. He attended his first conference as a very young writer in 1975, and his father, Charles M. Schulz (creator of Peanuts and the iconic Snoopy logo for SBWC), was a longtime supporter as well.
“Although, the 2025 SBWC has been postponed till June 2026, owner, Monte Schulz, and conference director, Grace Rachow, are already putting together plans for the 2026 event and want to assure all the fans of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference that we will be back as promised,” stated Rachow.
Regular updates on conference-related activities are available on the organization’s Facebook and Instagram pages and you can sign up to receive further information at sbwriters.com.
