Words with Friends

Words with Friends

The Santa Barbara Writers Conference
Celebrates 50 Years of Finding and
Refining Our Voices

By Leslie Dinaberg | June 1, 2023

Writing can be hard, but it doesn’t always have to be lonely. For those who yearn for a tribe of folks who care as much as they do about words and stories and getting their ideas out into the universe, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference (SBWC)  is an incredible place to connect with others who see the world through a storytelling lens.

This summer marks the 50th anniversary of SBWC with a week-long event taking place June 18-23 at the Mar Monte Hotel across from East Beach. A true labor of love, the conference was founded in 1973 by Mary Conrad and her late husband, Barnaby Conrad, and was held at Cate School for the first few years. Mary Conrad remains a close advisor to SBWC and has been to every single Santa Barbara Writers Conference, said Grace Rachow, the current director. “Mary Conrad is the mastermind, and we’re still doing things, almost, I would say, 95 percent the way that she designed it. She really had a good design for the conference, and we’ve been following it as much as is practical.” 

SBWC owner and workshop leader Monte Schulz is another person with deep ties to the storied confab. An SBWC supporter for decades, 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. In fact, one of Rachow’s earliest memories of SBWC is when, in about 1993, she was in the lobby of the Miramar Hotel (where the conference had moved to by then), “talking with this old guy with a Minnesota accent, just having a good time. I asked him what he was working on,” she laughed. “Little did I know I was talking to the creator of Peanuts. He was just there chatting and being friendly with this beginning writer.”

That casual camaraderie is one of the most important things that keep writers returning to the conference year after year. While the conference experience can be intense, with dozens of workshops focused on craft, marketing, and networking — perhaps there’s something about sleep deprivation that encourages bonding — one of its biggest and most unique selling points is the easy interaction between successful authors, new writers, and those who land somewhere in between. 

“There’s this feeling of love, where it’s almost like a rule hovering over everything — that you’re there to support one another. Not to be better than — if you are better, great, but be supportive to make it a good place for other people to learn how to make it a safe, supportive environment so that they can grow in their writing from wherever they are to wherever they want to be,” said Rachow. “That spirit that was there from the beginning.”

As for tips for newbies, Rachow offered this advice: “Not every moment of your first conference might be happy. Don’t give up because, you know, things look better on another day. There’s that Leonard Cohen line about how there’s a crack in everything and that’s how the light gets in. And by the end of the conference, everybody is cracked. And everybody who’s exposed our work has had both glory and defeat in the workshops. And it hurts to get feedback when you thought it was perfect,” she sighed. “But you can’t get better, you can’t let the light in, without getting cracked. So yeah, let’s get the cracking happening because it’ll make you a better writer.”

The Santa Barbara Writers Conference includes six days and nights of 30-plus writing workshops, panels, speakers, agents, and fellow word-crafters. 

There are workshops every morning and afternoon in a variety of genres and subjects — everything from memoir to poetry, voice and style, creative nonfiction, the first four pages, dramatic fiction, humor writing, writing for children, screenwriting, crafting short stories, and more — as well as the evening “pirate workshops,” which are more freeform sessions that go deep into the night. The workshops are all five days (10 morning workshops and 10 in the afternoon), and they are designed, Rachow said, to build on themselves but also stand alone in case a writer wants to dip in and out of different genres and subjects every day. 

In addition, there are a variety of publishing and marketing seminars offered, including the art of the query; interviews, journals, and reviews; websites and social media; traditional publication; being your own best publicist; and podcasts and audiobooks, among others. There’s also an agents day, where participants can make advance appointments to meet with an agent about their books. 

The afternoon panels and evening programs are ticketed events that are open to the public for $15 each, and include panels on murder, mystery, and thriller; an agents’ panel; celebrating five genres; memoir; and an author platform panel. Evening spotlight speakers include Monte Schulz, Sojourner Kincaid Rolle, Elinor Lipman, Mary Hogan, Judith Turner-Yamamoto, and Shannon Pufahl. 

Pre-registered conference attendees are also entitled to a free manuscript consultation, where they can send in up to 10 pages of a manuscript in advance and then have a one-on-one feedback session with one of the team members, all of whom are published authors who either teach writing, work as editors, or are otherwise professionally engaged in the business of writing.

“To a large extent, this is a labor of love, and remuneration is light,” said Rachow. Most weeklong conferences are about $1,500, so at $799 for the entire conference, SBWC is very accessible to a broad range of people, she said. In addition, SBWC offers reduced price options for people who can only attend part of the time (one-day, two-day, etc.).

While Rachow devotes herself to SBWC full-time for about seven months leading up to the conference, she said, “During the conference week, there are approximately 75 staff: volunteers, workshop leaders, panelists, agents, and speakers who contribute their time and expertise — a truly epic effort.” 

Additional close advisors include: Matthew Pallamary, workshop leader and prolific author who has been with the conference since the 1980s; Marianne Dougherty, editor of WriteOn!, the conference newsletter, and curator of the evening keynote speakers, who has been with SBWC since the 1990s; Ron Guilbault, collaborator and mentor on graphics and data management; and Robert DeLaurentis, collaborator and mentor on web development.

For more information or to register for SBWC, visit sbwriters.com.

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Editor’s Note: Leslie Dinaberg is a manuscript consultant for the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, and ‘Independent’ writers David Starkey, Melinda Palacio, and Brian Tanguay are presenting seminars at the conference.