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.”