Save the date: Sunday June 18, 7:30 PM, Pacific Ballroom at the Mar Monte in San Barbara, Monte Schulz will speak about his new novel, Metropolis, a dystopian narrative of love in a time of war and moral disintegration, as well as a meditation on the meaning of virtue and goodness in the face of the most monstrous crimes.
SBWC 1975
In 1975 the Santa Barbara Writers Conference established itself at the Miramar Hotel in Montecito, a posh community of coastal Santa Barbara. Picture an array of blue-roofed cottages along the Pacific Ocean.
The Miramar days, for those who attended during that 25-year period, are remembered as a “Camelot” era of SBWC. The dates of the 1975 conference were June 13-20, and the cost was $200.
The old Miramar offered tennis courts, two swimming pools, and a railroad car converted into a lunch spot next to tracks where the train ran daily through the hotel grounds. There was a spacious dining room overlooking green lawns and a dimly lit bar, where some conference goers congregated until closing time. The piano in the bar provided an opportunity for the more talented SBWC attendees to show off.
This was the first year our beloved Charles (Sparky) Schulz came to the conference, and not only decided to stay the entire week, but he also became a mainstay of the conference for years to come, giving generously of his time and comic characters without compensation.
Few writing conferences could boast the likes of workshop leaders like Barnaby Conrad, John Leggett, Kenneth Rexroth, and Sid Stebel. Fresh from his success as a script consultant for the Australian-based movie Picnic at Hanging Rock, Sid became a workshop leader legendary for open and laser-like critiques of the writing of everyone who attended his class. His moniker “Samurai Sid” was well-deserved. He referred to his students as “Sid's Snowflakes” to emphasize the fact that each was unique in his or her own way. Sid also became a mainstay of the conference, teaching every year after until his death in 2020.
Sid was best friends with Ray Bradbury, giving Ray a great excuse to open the SBWC for all the coming years until his health no longer allowed.
SBWC attendees came from all over the county and the world. One secret to the success of this new conference was Mary and Barnaby Conrad’s extensive network of friends, family and business associates that resulted from Barnaby’s diverse careers of State Department Vice Consul, artist, sculptor, author, and bullfighter, all of which drew an increasingly eclectic cadre of personalities who came…and often stayed.
SBWC’s future looked bright.
Quoted and adapted with appreciation to Armando Nieto, Mary Conrad, and Matt Pallamary: The Santa Barbara Writers Conference Scrapbook — Words of Wisdom from Thirty Years of Literary Excellence 1973 – 2004.
“The Old Miramar.” This image of the blue-roofed cottages is based on a painting by plein air artist S. L. Campbell.
Ten Time Tips from SBWC Writing Pros
One big difference between successful authors and writers who aspire to be successful authors is that successful authors find the time to write. Life offers many responsibilities and distractions, especially with the advent of the 24X7 devices that tether us to the Internet. So be it...that is what we have in 2023. So we adapt.
Ten Time Tips from Writing Pros:
1. Set writing time on your daily schedule and keep it. Even 20 minutes can be productive.
2. Use short amounts of time to get something done.
3. Use drive time and waiting-in-line time to put pieces together.
4. Writing gets done in your mind, so when you are doing mindless chores, use your mind to write.
5. Write when you are exercising. Bonus points as exercise makes your mind work better for writing.
6. Keep a pocket notebook or your phone to write down ideas when they occur to you.
7. Get up earlier and use that time to write.
8. Spend less time wanting to write and use that time actually writing.
9. Spend time considering how you are using your time and invest in more productive choices.
10. Find a source of inspiration and motivation to write more now.
On that last item, I recommend signing up for a writers conference. We would love to have you at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference June 18-23, of course.
Looking forward to being with fellow writers can be a great motivator to get your novel or memoir written...or begun. Or a few more stories cranked out.
We promise you a magical week focused on writing, marketing and networking.
A week of crafting and camaraderie is well worth your time.
SBWC 1974
The second annual Santa Barbara Writers Conference was held at Cate school June 21-28, 1974. Building on the success of the first SBWC, the Conrads produced a lineup of speakers that would be the envy of any well-established conference: Ray Bradbury opened the conference as keynote speaker. Alex Haley introduced Budd Schulberg and a showing of his film, On the Waterfront. James Michener gave an evening address. Mel Tormé explained why I’d Rather Write Than Sing. Ross Macdonald (Ken Millar) spoke on “Writing, Mystery & Suspense.” Afternoon speakers included Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, Alex Haley, Clifton Fadiman, and James Sheldon.
The conference was already underway when Barnaby got a phone call from Frankfurt, Germany from James Michener asking if he was still invited to speak at the conference. If so, it was going to cost the Conrads extra. With some trepidation Barney asked, “How so?”
“It’ll cost $50 to change my airline ticket.”
Barnaby came up with the $50. He was fond of telling his audiences throughout the years that Michener came for the afternoon and stayed three days. By the end of the 1974 conference, this gathering of writers had become an institution in Santa Barbara County.
Quoted with appreciation to Armando Nieto, Mary Conrad, and Matt Pallamary: The Santa Barbara Writers Conference Scrapbook — Words of Wisdom from Thirty Years of Literary Excellence 1973 – 2004.
Clockwise from top: Ross Macdonald (Ken Millar), Ray Bradbury, Sid Stebel, James Michener
SBWC 1973
Because SBWC will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in June 2023, we’ll be doing a countdown of the years of the amazing literary legacy provided by the vision and verve of Mary and Barnaby Conrad.
The idea for the conference was conceived in the summer of 1972, and the first Santa Barbara Writers Conference was held June 22-29, 1973, at Cate School in Carpinteria.
The history of the first 30 years is contained in the SBWC Scrapbook, compiled and written by Mary Conrad, Y. Armando Nieto, and Matthew Pallamary. Thank you to them for allowing us to quote and use their research for this countdown.
The cost of the first conference was $200, including board and room.
There were 6 workshop leaders and 37 students.
According to Mary Conrad, Ray Bradbury showed up with a sleeping bag and bedded down in the dorm with the students so he could regale them with stories all night long.
“From the first day, SBWC was a place apart from the burning issues of the day, which is not to say that the students and faculty did not have opinions on the war in Vietnam or the collapse of the American auto industry, or any other issue. However, conversations of politics segued into an analysis of the latest re-write of someone’s opening chapter.
“The grand experiment was 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 conferences, there was something tangibly different here. When they made their way home from the Cate School Campus, each looked forward to the next year, as if to a beloved family gathering.”
And so it has continued for fifty years.
SBWC Founders Barnaby & Mary Conrad, and long time participant, Ray Bradbury
Reading in the Time of Coronavirus by Marianne Dougherty
Some of the best writers in the world have spoken at The Santa Barbara Writers Conference (SBWC) since its inception in 1972—William Styron, Ray Bradbury, Joan Didion, Eudora Welty, Clive Cussler, Raymond Chandler, Sue Grafton, Jane Smiley and many more. This year with cities on lockdown because of Covid-19 and many of us sheltering in place, we’ve had to postpone this year’s conference. We know how disappointing this news is. Still, books can help us put things into perspective, expand our horizons or simply wow us with the sheer force of language and story. So, as a treat for our faithful SBWC attendees, we asked some of the authors who have spoken at SBWC or were scheduled to speak this year—Armando Lucas Correa, Alexandra Fuller and Shannon Pufahl—to tell us about their favorite books and why they mean so much to them. Think of it as a reading list to get you through self-isolation for however long it lasts or to get you through the year until we meet again.
ARMANDO LUCAS CORREA, editor of People en Español and the author of The German Girl and The Daughter’s Tale, came up with a list of ten remarkably diverse books.
1. I read Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert when I was 10 and was fascinated by that woman who drank spoonfuls of vinegar so she would look emaciated to her husband. It's the perfect novel. When I left Cuba and arrived in the United States, I asked my mother to send me my books. One day, she told me that someone could bring me one book, only one. Picking it among hundreds was a challenge. I asked her to send me my worn-out copy of Madame Bovary. This served as inspiration for the bookstore owner in The Daughter's Talewhen she has to save her most precious book from Nazi Germany’s book burning pyres.
2. Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar is another youthful reading that made me fall in love with La Maga and Paris. Hopscotch is one of my favorite novels because of its use of language and structure.
3. Memoir of Hadrian and Fires by Marguerite Yourcenar have been constant companions since college. They were a true discovery for me. Classic characters and mythological Greeks mingle with an astonishing everydayness in the hands of Yourcenar.
4. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima is my favorite novel by this Japanese author: the master and the disciple and the weight of guilt in a caste society.
5. On Writing is Stephen King’s masterpiece. Everyone who intends to write should read and re-read this unique work by the master of horror novels. I've acquired the habit, which has become almost a superstition, of reading On Writing every time I start writing a new book.
6. Our House in the Last World by Oscar Hijuelos is a debut novel, but of all his books, it's my favorite, and I recently re-read it. It's the most Cuban of all his novels, the most traumatic and the one that best reflects the questions of identity of an entire generation of children of immigrants or exiles in a language that is very close to the Latin American boom.
7. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. One of my favorite American writers, she reconstructs loss from a scientific and emotional level. Her mix of medical terms with what she’s dealing with as she loses a husband is masterful.
8. 2666 by Roberto Bolaños is a real masterpiece. I know that The Savage Detectiveswas the work that earned him his place in world literature, but his posthumous work is my favorite. Bolaños mixes several novels in one, their stories hermetically sealed capsules. His sense of humor, the use of irony in his language, the way he manipulates the reader, all make his writing exciting. His paragraphs defy gravity and logic. When Bolaños writes, he plays with his readers, setting them up for a fall.
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez was also childhood reading for me, but it’s a book I have revisited during my adolescence and adulthood. You can always discover something new and be charmed into the magical world of the inhabitants of Macondo.
10. The Occupation Trilogy by Patrik Modiano is a novel that at the same time is a book of quotes from characters who come and go during the Nazi occupation. It's a book that helped me understand the French during the German occupation so I could write The Daughter's Tale.
SIMON VAN BOOY has the soul of a poet. He is also the award-winning author of thirteen books. His short story collection, Love Begins in Winter, won the 2009 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.
1. Buddy by Nigel Hinton: First time I connected to a character. I read it in 1986. This is one of the best books I've ever read, and after re-reading it, it's still magnificent. And by some miracle, I'm now friends with the author.
2. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels: First time a novel made me want to write. More because of the language than the story. I'm still much more interested in language than story.
3. Plainsong by Kent Haruf: This book is a fantastic example of pure storytelling where there's little trace of the author.
4. The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin: This book reminds me to find beauty and wonder in the everyday.
5. The Complete Poems of Dylan Thomas: While I understand little, reading his work breaks down walls into new territories of language.
ALEXANDRA FULLER (Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood and Travel Light, Move Fast) is a British-Zimbabwean author who lives in Wyoming. The bestselling memoirist and journalist has managed to find an upside to self-isolation. “It’s been a while since I have been able to spend uninterrupted time with my library,” she says. “Like everything else, it’s thinned over the years (all those disruptive relationships and sudden moves and the upending griefs of an eventful middle age, both expected and unexpected), but the works of the poets and mystics and prophets have stayed with me throughout—some new, some old—some half read and waiting for a more patient understanding, one read and re-read until the pages are shredded. So, it’s to them I have turned with fresh humility.” Hers is less a list than a deep dive into the books that have resonated strongly with her over the years.
“Two years ago, I stumbled across a copy of Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West by Daniel Ladinsky in a little church in Kilauea on the island of Kauai,” says Fuller, whose son had recently died. She and her daughters had gone to Hawaii to get out of the “geography of our grief.” When she came home to Wyoming, she bought a copy of the book, which has not since left her bedside table. “Rumi—the fire hose of sacred verse—is featured in Ladinsky’s collection, of course, and also Hafiz,” she says, “but so too are Mira, Saint Teresa and Meister Eckhart, whose Love Does That is a poem to be read aloud to one another in times of adversity.”
Fuller also suggests Charles Wright’s 2007 book-length poem, Littlefoot. “Wright wrote the poem as a diary in his 70th year as a meditation on nature, death, all of it,” she says. “The poets are always the practical ones, pointing us in the direction of ourselves, which brings me to the sublime music and rich art and ecstatic words of Hildegard of Bingen, a twelfth century German Benedictine abbess, writer, environmentalist, feminist, gardener, prophet, composer, artist, visionary, outspoken firebrand and occasional hysteric. I like this about her: She could pitch an impressive fit, and she had the spiritual chops to back it up. At fourteen, Hildegard was enclosed for some years—it’s uncertain how many—with her 20-year-old teacher, Jutta, in an anchor hold attached to the Benedictine monastery in Disibodenberg. Hildegard had an extraordinarily vivid relationship with the sacred. From the age of three or five, she reported receiving Divine instructions. She also made elaborate gold-leaf-adorned sacred art of her visions.” Fuller recommends Hildegard von Bingen: A Journey into the Images by Sara Salvadori as a good place to start. “I am currently in the midst of a very slow read of her Scivias—Know the Ways. ‘But a person has within him three paths,’ she writes. ‘What are they? The soul, the body and the senses; and all human life is led there.’ And so, as in all times, body and soul insist on being kept together, and the senses quicken to this demand. There will be spring in the mountains soon. Snow will recede from the meadow, soil will emerge black and wet, and elk calves will drop in the cottonwood forests. And I will be giving fresh attention to my garden; I already am.” Every gardener knows the addiction of seed catalogs, and Fuller has quite a few. At the moment she is perusing them in careful consideration with Diana Maranhao’s Rocky Mountains Fruit & Vegetable Gardening. “She writes that the important thing, as if for this exact moment,” says Fuller, “is that you grow (garden) and continue growing (gardening)!”
JANET FITCH is the author of the national bestseller White Oleander as well as her epic novels of the Russian Revolution: The Revolution of Marina M and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral. “It’s so particular to ones’ own taste and changes over time,” she said when we asked her to name five of her favorite books, but she narrowed it down to these:
1. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Doestoevsky. The intensity, the extremes, the psychological acuity, the compelling crime—Doestoevsky made me the writer I am, and this is his magnum opus. He was influenced by Poe and Dickens, and so was I!
2. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. The most astonishing work of art, the death of the English consul in Cuernavaca, Mexico on the day of the dead 1939. It’s all about resonances, echoes, repeating images.
3. The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (or the first one, Justine, if I can’t have the whole Quartet). People don’t read Durrell enough. I’d like to revive him—nobody writes more beautifully, more sensually, with an artist’s eye. The world of high society and the demimonde in Alexandria, Egypt between the wars.
4. The Lover by Marguerite Duras. A slender book of sexuality, rebellion, colonialism and individuation as a woman looks back to her poverty-stricken girlhood in French Indochina and her wealthy Chinese lover. What Duras can get into 125 pages is a marvel.
5. The Perfect Spy by John Le Carre. One of our great writers, often neglected because he writes genre (spy novels), this is a book as psychologically acute as Doestoevsky’s. Young Magnus Pym struggles to find a distance and a moral framework as he’s co-opted by his con-man father. It’s his most autobiographical work.
She also graciously offered a list of books for quarantine. “They’re a bit lighter than my favorites (though you can’t go wrong with John Le Carre),” she says. “Either mesmerizing and not too dreary, or actually hilarious.”
1. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrente—first novel in the Neapolitan quartet, the friendship of two girls from the slums of Naples. Bringing seriousness and close observation to the lives of women. Nobody is better at tracking the small movement of emotion and loyalties than Ferrente.
2. Lolly Willowes by Silvia Townsend Warner. Witchiness in a Victorian home as the oppressed maiden aunt rebels against her role as unpaid servant.
3. Bleak House by Charles Dickens. The lawsuit that wouldn’t die. Dickens’ funniest book.
4. Drop City by TC Boyle. Hapless hippies decide to move to Alaska to live off the land. Who said nobody remembers the ‘60s?
5. The Sword in the Stone by TH White. This is a beautiful book, far more exciting than Harry Potter, and if you have only read the Disney version, you need to remedy this failing.
6. The Group by Mary McCarthy. Follows a group of Vassar girls through their lives. Trash from the pen of a major writer is always FABULOUS, and The Group is just delicious.
SHANNON PUFAHL can craft a metaphor with the best of them. Set in the American West in 1956, her debut novel, On Swift Horses, brims with beautiful language and creates its own kind of mythology. She recommends The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje; All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy; Houskeeping by Marilynne Robinson; So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell; and The Known World by Edward P. Jones. For the record, Michael Ondaatje called So Long, See You Tomorrow, which was published in 1996, “one of the great books of our age.” Pufahl suggests that The English Patient is a “great book for being brought together in a time of crisis, since the characters are camped out in an Italian villa at the end of World War II.” The author is also reading Silence by Jane Brox, a social history of one of the least understood elements of our lives. “I’d say it’s a good time to think about and practice silence,” she says. “It’s important to be together and find ways to connect right now, but it’s also a great opportunity to be quiet.” Still looking for another book about silence and why it’s more important now than ever? Pufahl recommends Silence: In the Age of Noise by Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge.
STEPH POST (Miraculum and Holding Smoke) grew up in the backwoods outside of St. Augustine, Florida, with a deep connection to the land and a keen appreciation of the outsider. She lives about an hour north of Tampa, Florida, where she raises a brood of chickens with very specific personalities.
1. I read Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient for the first (of many) times when I was sixteen, and it still remains my favorite novel. Ever. For the language and for the love story, for all the tiny heartbreaks along the way. It's also one of the books that made me desperately want to be a writer one day.
2. Maybe there's something about the current craziness of our world that makes us return to the past, but I've also been thinking a lot about The Rapture of Cannan by Sherri Reynolds. I was 17 when I first read this novel about a girl living and fighting within a poor, Southern, fundamentalist community, and I knew not only that I wanted to be a writer, but that I “could” be a writer, that beautiful stories could be written about the ugliest of people and places and that there was room for my voice, too, in the literary world.
3. Apart from these two gems, I've been thinking about the books that can get us through isolation, distancing and, you know, daily panic attacks about the future. Last year I discovered Sharon Kay Penman and her absolutely compelling medieval historical series and stand-alones. I'm currently reading her latest novel, The Land Beyond the Sea, but for one anyone new to her work, I'd suggest starting with Here Be Dragons, the first of her Welsh trilogy. Penman writes with such immersive detail that it’s easy to get lost in the trials and tribulations of a thousand years ago and forget about our own for a while.
4. If historical fiction doesn't cut it for you, but you'd still like to escape into a few thousand pages, I'd say now is the perfect time to dive into an epic fantasy series like Katherine Derr’s Deverry series. Start with Daggerspell and continue on for another 15 books. If you started now, the world might be back to normal before you reach the epic conclusion.
5. And finally, check out The Goshawk by T. H. White. It's a slim volume, but one that cuts like a knife. The memoir of a man struggling to tame, but ultimately understand, a hawk in isolation is striking and resonating. As our horizons necessarily close in, this is a book to turn to find patience and the appreciation of life outside of our own.
Looking Back at 2019
Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Teaches Poetry June 16-21
Poetry
Working toward a publishable draft of an original poem
Monday-Friday
1:00-3:30 PM
RM 270
Each day we will start by an indepth craft class in which we will look at poems in which a specific aspect of craft is used to great effect, and we’ll discuss that in group. We will also workshop participants’ poems — on a first come, first serve basis. I will offer some useful revision tricks as well. Bring your love for poetry, your sense of humor, one poem (12 copies) that needs help, and TLC — you’ll get it all in this workshop!
Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, of Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry, and of A New Hunger selected as a Notable Book by the American Library Association. Sungold Editions published her chapbook Rooms Remembered. Her latest collection These Many Rooms was published by Four Way Books in early 2019. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and the editor of four anthologies. She taught at Emerson College, Sarah Lawrence College, briefly at UCSB, and is a member of the core faculty at the Solstice Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program. As Santa Barbara’s new Poet Laureate, she is planning many poetry craft classes, workshops, readings and other events with the generous support of the Santa Barbara Public Library.
Trey Dowell Teaches Everything You Need to Know About Query Letters on June 19
Trey Dowell
The Art of the Query
Wednesday
1:00-3:30 PM
El Cabrillo
A brilliant 300-page novel is meaningless unless the writer can entice someone into reading page one. Whether pursing an agent or submitting directly to a publisher, your chances of success depend heavily on one thing: the query letter.
This session will focus on the art of querying—sparking curiosity, building anticipation, and channeling a reader’s energy into page one of your book. We’ll discuss proven query strategies and methods, along with some of the mistakes writers often make. We’ll also dissect real-world queries that worked, and talk about the elements that made them succeed. This will be an interactive hands-on class, so feel free to bring your own work-in-progress query—we’ll read them aloud and workshop.
Trey Dowell is proud graduate of the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference and he resides in Saint Louis Missouri, working feverishly on more novel
Wylene Wisby Dunbar Teaches the Hidden Truth of Fiction
The Hidden Truth of Fiction
Monday - Friday
9:00-11:30 AM
El Monte
There is as much, if not more, truth in good fiction than any other written text. The more there is, the better the work and it’s not about the research. This seminar uses discussion, critique and exercises to help you learn how to find the truth beneath the surface in your own writing.
My advice for writers who have never attended SBWC is to relax and enjoy everything. You don’t actually have to take anyone’s advice or, for that matter, accept their criticism but do try to make the input useful to you
Wylene Wisby Dunbar is the author of Margaret Cape (winner of MIAL Best Fiction award) and My Life with Corpses. She has a third novel in progress.
Travel Writer Extraordinaire, Jerry Camarillo Dunn, Jr., teaches Travel Writing at SBWC
Jerry Camarillo Dunn, Jr.
Travel Writing
Wednesday-Friday
9:00-11:30 AM
RM 269
Learn how to write an engaging, lively travel piece – and by extension any nonfiction story for publication – through a carefully structured series of lessons and exercises. You’ll discover how to organize your raw material into a story, create scenes and descriptions, and come up with sentences and words that pop off the page.
Travel writing gives you a lifelong education in everything from architecture to zoology, and opens up a richer, deeper life for you — and your readers. My workshop takes a systematic approach for maximum learning; I recommend you come on the first day, but you’re welcome any time.
Jerry Camarillo Dunn, Jr. is a nonfiction and travel writer whose credits include more than 600 articles and 11 books, among them travel guides for National Geographic and the Smithsonian. His popular book My Favorite Place on Earth (Nat Geo), features 75 remarkable people — from the Dalai Lama to Jane Goodall to Jerry Seinfeld
The Seven Deadly Sins of Novel Writing Taught by Gar Anthony Haywood
Gar Anthony Haywood
The Seven Deadly Sins of Novel Writing
There are many ways to write a novel badly, but this course will teach you how to avoid and eliminate the Seven Deadly Sins that all-too many writers make that stand in the way of an agent or editor accepting your manuscript
Monday-Friday
9:00-11:30 AM
Vista II
Through written exercises and open discussions of your work with the entire class, you will learn: - Where to start your story for the greatest possible impact, so that a reader is hooked by page one. - The delicate science of air-tight plotting. (No loopholes, gaps in logic, or cheating allowed.) - How to create central and peripheral characters unique to your vision and voice, no matter how overly-familiar their literary models may seem to be. - The difference between “realism” and “believability,” and how to do your research accordingly. - Where and when to cut the fat in your manuscript for a leaner, more satisfying read. - The importance of natural yet informative dialogue. (Hint: Exclamation marks should be doled out like drinking water on a lifeboat. Because real people don’t talk like this!)
Gar Anthony Haywood, is the Shamus and Anthony award-winning author of numerous short stories and twelve crime novels, including detective serials, stand-alone thrillers, and two “comic cozies.”
Mary Penney Hershey will Teach Writing for Children at SBWC June 16-21
Mary Penney Hershey
Writing for Children
This workshop covers an overview of children's lit as well as an emphasis on working with each student to discover their strongest stories.
Monday-Friday
9:00-11:30 PM
RM 179
Mary Penney Hershey will cover the ABC's of Children's Literature -- with a Few E's and Z's thrown in for the Eager and Zealous
She will offer an overview of the best of children's lit titles and explain the different age-related genres within the children's marketplace. She’ll guide attendees through the journey to publication, addressing writer's groups, classes, conferences, how to target specific agents and editors, and current submission processes. Throughout the workshop, Mary will help students identify their unique "sweet spot" for excavating the best and strongest story.
This workshop also covers selecting and distilling the essence of a strong story idea in a first paragraph or page. Students will select and prepare an arresting story beginning, designed to catch the attention of a busy (read swamped) editor or agent. Students will read first pages with feedback by Mary and other workshop students.
Mary Penney Hershey is an author of five humorous and heartfelt middle grade novels, published with Random House and Harper Collins. Her sixth novel, entitled GREEN EYES & HAM, will be launched Fall of 2019 with editor Kristen Petit of Harper Collins.
Mary holds an undergraduate degree in Child Development and a Master's degree in Education. She is an Army veteran, a certified Personal & Executive Coach, and works full-time at Chaucer's Bookstore in Santa Barbara, where she is frequently instructed to stop drooling on the new releases.
Melodie Johnson Howe Helps Writers Discover Their Inner Editor
Melodie Johnson Howe
Writing is Rewriting: Discovering Your Inner Editor
Exploration through the process of editing how the writer can develop his or her own critical monitor. Fiction and nonfiction writers welcome
Monday-Friday
9:00-11:30 AM
Gazebo
It is important that a new writer send in a polished manuscript. With that in mind, students will learn what is important to their work: what keeps pace, suspense, and plot moving and what doesn’t. The writing of novels and nonfiction rely on the same techniques: developing character, using dialogue as action, and creating human tension. Raymond Chandler once said, “When in doubt (as a writer) have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” Join this workshop and find out how to make that man and that gun real.
Catherine Ann Jones Teaches Two Workshops on Monday June 17
The Way of Story
Integrative approaches to writing narrative
Monday, June 17
9:00-11:30 AM
El Cabrillo
The Way of Story offers an integrative approach to writing narrative—both fiction and nonfiction—including plays, screenplays, short stories, novels, and memoir.“We’ve become lopsided living only in our heads.Writing, in order to serve the soul, must integrate outer craft with the inner world of intuition and feeling.”
Finding Your Voice in Memoir
Memoir and voice
Monday, June 17
1:00-3:30 PM
El Cabrillo
Learn how to research and structure your life story, write three-dimensional characters, and discover your voice.
Nancy Klann Fires up the Senses in her SBWC Fiction Workshop June 17-18
Fire Up the Senses
How to strengthen your fiction
Monday - Tuesday
9:00-11:30 AM
RM 269
This workshop will share techniques on elevating your fiction: How to describe a scene more vividly using sensory details; writing authentic dialogue by getting the author out of the conversation; making setting much more than landscapes and the weather; creating unforgettable characters who will drive your story.
No matter where you are in your writing progress, trust that you may ask questions in the supportive environment of this workshop. There will be handouts on the subjects covered, and participants may bring work-in-progress to share. The goal is to kick your writing to the next level by exploring the options in the novel toolbox.
Nancy Klann-Moren is the author of one novel, The Clock of Life, and a collection of short stories, Like Flies on the Patio. The Clock of Life has received awards from Writers Digest, Next Generation Indie Awards, Readers Favorite Book Awards, Kindle Book Awards and more.
Award-Winning Poet Marsha de la O will be a Guest in Perie Longo's Workshop
Highly awarded poet, Marsha de la O, has graciously accepted Perie’s invitation to speak at her workshop at 10-11 on Wed. June 19. Marsha will read some of her poems, talk about her process of writing and publishing, as well as make comments on a poem or two of workshop participants. Marsha’s newest book was just published by the Pitt Poetry Series titled Every Ravening Thing. Her previous book, Antidote for Night, was winner of the 2015 Isabella Gardner Award and Black Hope was winner of the New Issures Press Poetry Prize. Her poems have been published extensively, including in the New Yorker and the Kenyon Review.
Perie Longo Helps Poets Craft Their Poems
Poetry
Crafting of poems that students bring to the “feast of words.”
Monday - Friday
9:00-11:30 AM
RM 270
Perie Longo suggests how to improve specific poems and offers commentary on poetry writing in general, including the structure, emotional content, language, imagery, rhythm, what strengthens a poem, and when it is not working, why. Assignments are given each day. There is some writing in the workshop. Students need to bring typed copies of their poems they want crafted and 10 copies to distribute for workshop participants to also give comments.
Focusing on the importance of language, imagery and figurative speech, structure and rhythm, helps us all say what is difficult to express in a fresh way that lasts after the last line.
As a past Santa Barbara Poet Laureate (2007–2009), Perie Longo learned how poetry is a meaningful link to her community, and that writing about what lives in our backyard often connects us to the wider world in significant ways. Longo has published four books of poetry: Milking The Earth,The Privacy Of Wind,With Nothing Behind But Sky: a journey through grief and Baggage Claim. Nominated for the Pushcart prize three times, her work has appeared in Askew, Atlanta Review, Connecticut Review, International Poetry Review, Miramar, Nimrod, Paterson Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Quiditty, Rattle, South Carolina Review and several others. Longo is also a contributing poet in several anthologies. She was also a poet in the schools for over twenty-five years and continues to teach privately. As a psychotherapist, she often integrates poetry for healing. In 2005, Longo was invited to the University of Kuwait to speak on Poetry as a Path to Peace and give workshops. She has been teaching poetry with SBWC since 1984 and loves doing so for poets and prose writers alike.
Carmen Madden is Back to Teach Dramatic Fiction
Dramatic Fiction
Effective script writing
Monday - Friday
1:00-3:30 PM
RM 179
This workshop will emphasize how to build your script so that it has smooth continuity, great characters, and tension-filled conflict. Assignments are given each day, and works-in-progress will be read and critiqued.
Carmen Madden is the founder of CLM FILMS, a feature film studio located in Oakland, California. Madden is the producer/director/writer of the award-winning suspense film Everyday Black Man, which won several awards including Best Feature Film during its film festival run. The film can currently be seen on BET and Showtime. Madden will be shooting her next feature film, Shadow Fight, this summer. In addition to her film career, Madden is an associate professor of English at Ohlone College and writes short stories and novels. Her short stories have been published in literary magazines. Madden is currently working on a detective novel, Queen of King Street, and a nonfiction book.
Marla Miller Shows Writers How to Hook Their Readers
Hooking Readers
Editorial read & critique and social media strategies and discussion
Monday - Friday
1:00-3:30 PM
Vista I
Aimed at all levels, fiction & nonfiction, this workshop cross-pollinates editorial work with marketing and social media strategies, to expand author platforms. Both are needed in the 21st century publishing reality. In all sessions, leader and participants will listen for reader hook-ability and social media rooted platform building ideas and strategies. Workshop attendees are to bring openings, 5–7 pages (fiction or narrative nonfiction) and book proposals – overview, introduction and sample chapter. Query letters for critiquing also welcomed.
For 16 years, Marla Miller wrote for OC Register magazine before becoming founding editor-in-chief of an O.C. lifestyle magazine. In 1999, Simon and Schuster published her first book, All American Girls, the authorized biography of the World Cup/Gold Medal winning U.S Women’s National Soccer Team. Until 2003, her sports columns appeared on Oxygen.com. In 2003, Miller’s experience in traditional publishing inspired her to launch MarketingtheMuse Workshop at SBWC. Though indie publishing wasn’t much of a thought back then, association with a big house taught her that many traditionally published authors receive very little help from marketing departments. So now she works with writers on the road to publication.
