Where Writing Pays Off: The Legacy of the Santa Barbara Writers' Conference.
By Melinda Palacio
-- May 18, 2002
Ever wonder how authors in your favorite bookstore get published? The Santa Barbara Writers' conference has been leading writers onto the right path for 30 years.
Barnaby and Mary Conrad started the Writers' conference at Cate School in Carpinteria with 40 students. In 1999, the conference reached its maximum occupancy with 400 students at the Miramar. The weeklong event, June 21-28 at Westmont College, is part powwow and part workshop for honing the craft of writing. Friends meet year after year. Authors, like Ray Bradbury, keep coming back--Bradbury's been inspiring writers at the conference for 30 years. The secret to the SBWC's success is its sense of camaraderie. Barnaby Conrads says writers are surprised by the conference's unpretentious atmosphere.
"Writing is so
lonely. They write all year and most of them don't see other writers
at all, certainly not famous writers and published writers. And, here
they feel the camaraderie and they're also very surprised, I think,
at how friendly the famous writers are and how they can actually talk
to them.
"And, then there are other conferences, such as Bread Loaf, which is very famous back east. At Bread Loaf they're not supposed to mingle with the writers. The staff eats at a different time, for example. Whereas here, you can go into the dining room and sit next to Ray Bradbury or whoever is there and talk to them about their work. And, they're surprised at how much reading the staff does--3000 words before they come and more outside of class. We enjoy it. It's such a thrill to find something really good. And, especially when it gets published."
SBWC welcomes everyone from the person who's thinking about writing to the published writer who wants to improve. Conference students have the opportunity to ask questions about literary agents during the agents' panel. This year's week offers 27 different workshop leaders who teach every genre of writing from poetry to mystery to non-fiction to fantasy, for example. Seventeen lectures are open to the public for $7 each, including a new book panel and talks by Sander Vanocur, Julia Child, and Marta Kauffman, co-creator of TV show "Friends."
With multiple workshops and guest speakers, it's a challenge to take advantage of every moment. However, some students prepare themselves for their yearly week of little sleep and manage to stay awake for the "Pirate Workshops" that start at 9:30pm. In 1980, Barnaby alerted author Shelly Lowenkopf that some people were meeting in one of the workshop rooms. Lowenkopf lent his editing skills and the "pirate workshop" became official. In 1990, the pirate workshops became so popular the conference added a second PW leader, author and local publisher John Daniel.
Workshop leaders, agents, and publishers sneak into the pirate workshops where they can listen to a Writers' scenes or chapters. "Most of the other workshop leaders don't give you the chance to read very long," said Lowenkopf. "Really good or really bad writing is a teaching experience. We stop and talk about how to make it work." Anne Lowenkopf says she sneaks into the pirate workshops when she can and describes them as a "high energy gathering of family."
In Anne
Lowenkopf's
fiction workshops, hearing writing that's ripe for publication is as
helpful as listening to a beginner read. Lowenkopf encourages
beginners and intermediate writers to attend her workshops.
"Giving information to beginning writers helps advanced writers. I like to talk quite a bit about first draft writing. I encourage journal writing and using notebooks. I firmly believe the best way to learn to write is to write, write, write and take the chance to learn to live with the pain of doing it badly. That's what will make you good. Finding the time to do journal writing regularly opens up emotion and attitudes and ideas you didn't know you had. All of a sudden, a story starts. The next important thing to writing is reading."
Mystery writer and workshop leader, Leonard Tourney lectures on the conventions of suspense and mystery writing and allows students to read from their manuscripts or notebooks. The UCSB professor brings with him the wisdom of 8 published Elizabethan murder mysteries.
"I've heard very fine things and I enjoy the things that I hear. The conference gives me great pleasure. It gives you an opportunity to think about some aspects of writing. What is it that I'm doing? How can I communicate what I know to people who have not discovered how to do that? Teaching forces you to express things that you know instinctively."
The Conrads are especially proud of the students who keep coming back. They beam when they discuss conference's success stories.
Mary Conrad recalls the dedication of one conference volunteer, Catherine Ryan-Hyde, author of "Pay It Forward" and "Walter's Purple Heart." "She went from volunteer to top writer. She worked very hard," Conrad said. "I've never known anybody whose worked so hard." Leonard Tourney admires hard-working writers like Ryan-Hyde, who's been attending SBWC since 1993. Ryan-Hyde started as a helpful conference student, now she returns as a famous speaker. "She paid her dues when she was struggling to get published," Tourney said. "It give me satisfaction that she's so successful."
Writers like Frances Weaver have succeeded through sheer determination and loyalty to the SBWC. Weaver was 73 when she wrote her first book. Barnaby Conrad says Weaver "always comes back to the conference."
"Francis Weaver came for twenty years and never published anything and suddenly she wrote a book called "The Girls with the Grandmother Faces;" she got $150, 000 for it. And, then, the next year she wrote another book called, "I'm Not As Old As I Used To Be," got another $150,000. She now travels around the world on a cruise ship giving lectures."
What will your conference be like?