As inevitably happens to me, I didn’t get to experience nearly as much of last week’s Santa Barbara Writers Conference as I would have liked to. However, the few events I was able to squeeze in were educational, entertaining, and inspiring.
Here are a few of the highlights.
A moving presentation by Sojourner Kincaid Rolle opened the evening presentation on Juneteenth, a holiday that our Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2015-2017 and author of the poem and picture book Free at Last: A Juneteenth Poem said “has come to represent freedom for people all over the world.” She wrote the poem in 2004 and described the twisting journey of how the work came to prominence all over the world, then performed a touching rendition of it for the group.