Panels and Presentations
See the schedule for complete details on event times and public ticket availability. Also see our evening Guest Speakers page.
Sunday
How to Begin
Barnaby Conrad, winner of the annual O. Henry short story award, has written for films, TV and magazines, as well as the N.Y. Times and the L.A. Times. He has written 35 books, both fiction and nonfiction, including the best-sellers Matador, Dangerfield, and The World of Herb Caen: San Francisco 1938-1997. His most recent: The 101 Best Scenes Ever Written. Coming soon: The Best Beginnings Ever Written. An artist in many different areas, including painting and woodcarving, serial raconteur, and long time area resident, he is the founder of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference.
Writing Travel that Sells
You can already write so let’s give you a strategy and the selling tools to repeatedly and profitably crack a hungry, buying market while you wait to be “discovered!” You learn the travel writing craft by simultaneously selling to newspapers and querying, then writing for magazines. You fill your coffers while you gain the invaluable experience and notches needed to sell a travel book. It’s all here in Gordon Burgett’s much-followed, step-by-step process.
Gordon Burgett is a seasoned travel writer with about 75% of his 1,700+ freelance articles printed in the travel field. His Travel Writer’s Guide, in its third edition, is widely used in the classroom and as a web class text. It was twice a Writer’s Digest Book Club top choice. Burgett has offered 2000+ paid spoken presentations nationwide and has written 35 published books, including How to Sell 75% of Your Freelance Writing, The Query Book, and Writer’s Digest’s Sell and Resell Your Articles. His most recent book, new in 2008, is Niche Publishing: Publish Profitably Every Time! [website].
Monday
Remaking the Word Processor as a Writer’s Instrument: Pencil-easy and Wizard-helpful
There are good reasons why Microsoft Word and its cousins are so complicated, obscure, and prone to unpleasant surprises, but they have nothing to do with the needs of professional writers. This workshop provides practical knowledge and techniques for setting up Microsoft Word and Open Office, the two leading word processors, so that they won’t eat your manuscripts, won’t change the formatting without being told to, won’t store your manuscript where you can’t find it, will stay out of the way most of the time, but provide help when you ask. Attendees will leave this workshop with practical advice and specific techniques to turn their word processor into a trusted assistant, instead of a temperamental troublemaker.
Steve Beisner is a co-publisher and editor of InkByte.com. A writer of short stories, poems, and novels. He is seeking publication of his first novel while working on his second. Steve is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the sole designer of the software that assembles the finished Ink Byte magazine from hundreds of textual and graphical components. Besides his writing efforts, which he considers his ‘full time’ occupation, he does computer and network consulting.
Finding an Agent: Sunday Afternoon Sail or the Poseidon Adventure?
This special workshop will cover topics like finding an agent – how to avoid a bad one, how to spot a great one, and why the process can be so daunting for both writers and agents. Other issues like researching an agent’s track record and dealing with intellectual properties attorneys will also be addressed.
Bob Walker had careers as a salvage diver, Alaska fishing guide, and adventurer, before he showed up at a 2005 writers conference with two chapters and a half-written synopsis of his first novel. He left with an agent representation contract in his hand and stars in his eyes. Since then, he’s dealt with several literary agents, editors, television agents, and intellectual property attorneys. Along the way, he’s earned the street equivalent of a PhD in investigating and dealing with them. His TV agent is currently negotiating the sale of a pilot based on his soon-to-be-published novel. He writes a monthly column called “Ask Bob” for the National Speakers Association, Greater Los Angeles Chapter, and travels the country as a speaker. Bob studied at the University of California, Irvine and has participated in many SBWC summer conferences and intensives.
What Do You Mean, You Don’t Like My Story?
This special workshop will focus on how writers can effectively deal with criticism and rejection.
Linda Branch is a Ph.D. in Human Development with an emphasis on transitions and transformations in life stages. She has written articles for national magazines and is now working on her first non-fiction book, The Canine Connection, about women and their psychological needs for companion dogs. Linda is the ombudsman for the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and is the driving force behind our SBWC Cafe, a read and critique luncheon group which meets each month in a local restaurant. She lives happily with her husband, Marv, in Santa Barbara. [website]
Agents and Editors Panel
Details Pending
Tuesday
New Book Panel
Lou Cannon, known for his political reporting on California and the nation, is the foremost biographer of Ronald Reagan. He has written five books about Reagan, including the acclaimed President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, published by Simon and Schuster in 1991. In 2003, PublicAffairs published Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power. Cannon’s latest book, Reagan’s Disciple: George W. Bush’s Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy (2008), is co-authored with his eldest son, Carl M. Cannon, a prize-winning White House correspondent for National Journal. Lou Cannon worked 26 years for The Washington Post, where he won many awards and was called a “reporter’s reporter” by his colleagues. Subsequently, he was a contributing editor and then chief executive officer of California Journal. He lectures on the presidency, the media, California politics, and police issues and has written for Smithsonian magazine and National Review and contributed op-ed pieces to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and other publications. Cannon was honored by the American Political Science Association in 1969 for “distinguished reporting of public affairs.” In 1984 he received the White House Correspondents Association’s coveted Aldo Beckman award for overall excellence in presidential coverage. He won the first Gerald R. Ford Prize (1988) for distinguished reporting on the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan presidencies. In 1995 Cannon was Raznick Distinguished Lecturer in the history department of the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 1996 he was Freedom Forum journalist in residence at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California. Cannon has four children and seven grandchildren. He and his wife, Mary, live in Summerland, near Santa Barbara, California.
Lori Hartman Gervasi graduated from UCLA’s Television/Film School and began working at ABC News in Los Angeles. She then went to Channel 9 in L. A. for 11 years to write and produce newscasts, and run the Entertainment News Division. After leaving television to raise her two sons, Lori began studying American Karate. In 1997, she received a black belt. Fight Like a Girl…and Win was published in August 2007 with a cover quote endorsement from Gavin de Becker, NY Times bestselling author of The Gift of Fear. Articles and reviews have been printed in The Chicago Tribune, Library Journal, and New York Metro. In October 2007, Lori appeared on NBC’s Today Show.
Margaret McMullan is the author of five novels; Cashay (forthcoming), When I Crossed No-Bob (2007), How I Found the Strong (2004), In My Mother’s House (2003), and When Warhol Was Still Alive (1994). In 2005, Margaret won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction and Southwestern Indiana's Arts Council Award for Artist of the Year. How I Found the Strong won the 2006 Award for Fiction from the Mississippi Library Association, the 2004 Indiana Best Young Adult Book of Fiction, was named an ALA 2005 Notable Social Studies Book, and named a Booklist’s Top Ten First Novel for Youth. Margaret's essays and short stories have appeared in Glamour, the Chicago Tribune, Southern Accents, the Indianapolis Star, TriQuarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Greensboro Review, The Southern California Anthology, Other Voices, Boulevard, Ploughshares and upcoming in The Sun. She received a Special Mention in the 2005 Pushcart Prize collection and twice she received the Individual Artist Fellowship from the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was the 2007 Eudora Welty Visiting Writer at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and she received her M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She is currently a professor of English at the University of Evansville, in Evansville, Indiana, where she’s working on her sixth novel for Moughton Mifflin. She lives with her husband, Patrick O’Connor and their son, James. The three of them have work in an upcoming issue of National Geographic for Kids.
Meg Waite Clayton Her second novel, The Wednesday Sisters, a story of friendship, loyalty and love — and of the ups and downs of writing and the beauty of writing groups — will be released by Random House/Ballantine in June. Her first novel, The Language of Light, was a finalist for the Bellwether Prize and was published both in the U.S. and overseas. Her essays have appeared in print in Runner's World, Writer's Digest, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, as well as online, and have been anthologized in the essay collection, Searching for Mary Poppins. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines, including the Literary Review, Shenandoah, Chelsea, and Other Voices, and have been performed onstage. A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, Meg was also a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference and an Emerging Voices Author at BookExpo 2004. She now lives in Palo Alto with her husband and their two sons.
Wednesday
Co-Authoring: The Art of Collaboration
Co-authors can create a team that is incredibly effective and self-sustaining. They must agree about core ideas, be able to engage in creative conflict, and learn to leave their egos at the door. This workshop weighs the advantages/disadvantages, discusses various methods, and explores the intricacies of the co-author relationship. For the last three years, psychotherapist James Rapson and writer Craig English have been collaborating on a nonfiction book as well as related articles and classes. Join them as they delve into the difficult and exhilarating world of co-authorship.
James Rapson, M.S., LMFT, is a veteran therapist and teacher whose writing combines hard-won personal insight with clinical experience and scholarship. He is the co-author of Anxious to Please: 7 Revolutionary Practices for the Chronically Nice, which was released nationally by Sourcebooks, Inc. in 2006 (now in third printing). James and Craig English bring 27 years of experience to their dynamic workshops. Mr. Rapson has been cited for his expertise on parenting and chronic niceness in recent articles by the Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Times and Atlanta Journal Constitution. He has written a series of articles on chronic niceness and anxious attachment for such diverse publications as the Washington Association of Marriage and Family Therapists Newsletter and Suite101.com. He is a regular guest on The Jill Spiegel Show (WFMP, St. Paul) and has been featured on such shows as Women’s Watch with Laurie Kirby (WBZ, Boston), The Beat with Megan Sukys (KUOW 94.9-FM, Seattle), and Health Marks w/Norman Marks on the nationally syndicated Health Radio Network. Television appearances include KING 5 Morning News with Joyce Taylor (NBC Seattle), FOX & Friends with Alisyn Camerota and Brian Kilmeade, and Geraldo at Large with Arthel Neville (Fox Network). James is the founder of Group of Dads, which offers classes, workshops and groups for fathers. His focus on human connection, coupled with his penchant for innovation, has led him to develop programs such as Couples in Motion and The Shared Vision Project. James has spent much of his life in front of audiences as a lecturer, musician, and actor.
Craig English, B.A., M.F.A., is an award winning author with extensive experience in both fiction and nonfiction. He is the co-author of Anxious to Please: 7 Revolutionary Practices for the Chronically Nice, which was released nationally by Sourcebooks, Inc. in 2006 (now in third printing). Publications include short stories which have appeared in such magazines as Talebones, Aeon Speculative Fiction and Frigg online, as well as a recent article in The Writer magazine. Craig has been cited for his expertise on chronic niceness in recent articles by the Seattle Times, Santa Barbara News Press and Next Step Magazine. Mr. English has been featured on such shows as The Beat with Megan Sukys (KUOW 94.9-FM, Seattle), and nationally syndicated programs such as The Health and Beauty Revolution Show with Patty Kovacs (WSRadio.com, Del Mar, CA), and Live with Dr. Alvin Jones (WCBQ-WHNC-AM, Oxford, NC). Recent television appearances include KING 5 Morning News with Joyce Taylor (NBC Seattle), Books in Review with Shari Barnes (Fort Worth), and Geraldo at Large with Arthel Neville (Fox Network).
The Road to Publication
This panel discussion explores the various routes to publication and is moderated by Stephen Blake Mettee of Quill River Books.
Fred Klein spent 30 years as a Vice President of Bantam Books, head of marketing and ultimately Executive Editor, working with a number of noted authors. He retired to Santa Barbara, California where he became part of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, was the book reviewer for the Santa Barbara News Press and helped create the Santa Barbara Book and Author Festival now in its 10th year. The former coeditor of The Film Encyclopedia, he currently works with writers and reviews for the Huffington Post.
Joni Labaqui is the contest director of L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future anthology contest, now in its 25th year. The contest has discovered seven authors who have gone on to become New York Times bestsellers and launched the careers of hundreds of professional writers. Winning the contest includes a week-long workshop with famous speculative fiction authors giving tips on how to write and how to promote yourself. Grand prize takes home $5,000. Quarterly winners take home between $1,000 and $500. The contest is the largest and most successful of its kind in the world.
Stephen Blake Mettee (panel moderator) is the author of The Fast-Track Course on How to Write a Nonfiction Book Proposal. Quill Driver Books publishes nonfiction books including books on writing. QDB’s authors include, Irving Stone, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and America’s most popular medical columnist Peter H. Gott, M.D. QDB has been recognized as one of the “Top 101 Independent Book Publishers” and by Writer’s Digest as one the 100 most new-writer friendly book publishers in the United States. Stephen is also a participant in Agents and Editors Day.
Beth Staples is the Managing Editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review & Marginalia, the literary magazine of The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ.
Willard Thompson is an award-winning writer, lecturer and historian living in Montecito, California. Dream Helper is the first in his Chronicles of California series of historical novels. Thompson was awarded The Sara Miller McCune Award by the John E. Profant Foundation for the Arts to write Dream Helper, which also won an award as a work in progress at the Santa Barbara Writers' Conference. He is the author of Searching for La Malinche, a contemporary novel about an illegal immigrant set in Los Angeles and Mexico. Valentine's Day, a short story, was awarded a prize at the East of Eden Writer's Conference. Recent published non-fiction articles by Willard are: Walter Vail — Empire Builder, Published in Persimmon Hill Magazine; The Last Cattle Drive, published in Range Magazine; Dividing the Waters, a brief history of Western water woes and the role John Wesley Powell played in the development of the West, also in Range Magazine. Running the Big Ditch, an account of a gofer's life on a commercial raft running the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, published in Westways Magazine and Forbidden Fruit, an account of three days on the El Paso border working with the Border Patrol to intercept smugglers. Thompson's manuscript, Montecito Adobes and the Settlers Who Built Them will be published by the Santa Barbara Historical Museum in 2008.
Thursday
Media Skills: Preparing for a Dynamic Interview that Turns Listeners into Readers
Writing is not speaking. It’s a whole other thing. Telling your story to a journalist means you must present yourself in a lively manner with candor, humor, self-awareness and the wisdom of hindsight. In a media interview you have a short amount of time to make that “first impression,” and sometimes only through your voice. In this lively workshop, you will gain the opportunity to be videotaped by an accomplished interviewer who is also a self-published author and will learn: tips and techniques to prepare yourself and the critical “sound bites,” how to stay on message, what to expect from the interviewer, to prepare for predictable pitfalls and worst case scenarios.
Lois Phillips, Ph.D. is an accomplished public speaker who has produced two talk shows and was recently co-host (with an attorney who is now a judge) of Dialogues, a public radio program about critical issues and current events (KCLU). She is a public speaking coach to authors, managers, leaders, doctors and lawyers, and politicians. She co-authored Women Seen and Heard: Lessons Learned from Successful Speakers with Anita Perez Ferguson. [Women Seen and Heard]
The Villain Drives the Plot: a workshop on characterization.
Gayle Lynds, NY Times best-selling author and SBWC alum, received the 3rd annual Barnaby and Mary Conrad Founders Award for Fiction in 2007. Gayle is the award-winning author of international espionage novels, including The Last Spymaster, The Coil, Masquerade, and Mesmerized. Her books have won numerous awards, including “Novel of the Year” (The Last Spymaster) given by the Military Writers Society of American, and have been in People magazine’s “Page-Turner of the Week” and “Beach Read of the Week.” Publishers Weekly lists her work among the top ten spy novels of all time, and called The Last Spymaster a “classic espionage thriller“ (that) strikes a perfect balance between the private lives of her characters and the blood and betrayal of their professional adventures. BookPage concurs: “Gayle Lynds has joined the deified ranks of spy thriller authors lie Robert Ludlum and John le Carre.” With Ludlum, she created the Covert-One series. The Hades Factor was a CBS miniseries in April 2006.
Journey of a First-Time Novelist
This seminar is a must for all unpublished writers. All the nuts and bolts from manuscript to agent to publisher to marketing, promotion and PR. Learn most of the pitfalls facing first-time writers. Find out how the big publishers make a bestseller and the most important component of any marketing campaign. This isn't theory, but a real-life experience that will not only help first-timers, but even published writers. This is a seminar that will help writers avoid costly mistakes.
Ronald Cutler is a media pioneer whose effect on communications is still being felt today. His creations have entertained millions. In writing The Secret Scroll, Cutler not only read more than seventy-five books on biblical history, but also talked with leading biblical archaeologists, interviewed experts, visited Israel and visited the Rockefeller Museum, site of the IAA headquarters, and the other sites in The Secret Scroll. He synthesized that information and research to create this novel. For over six weeks, The Secret Scroll was in the Top 50 bestselling hardcovers in suspense/thrillers/mystery of Nielsen/BookScan, the only novel on the list that’s not from one of the big six publishers.
Screenwriting Panel
Robert Eisele Mr. Eisele’s original screenplay, “The Great Debaters” (from a story by Eisele and Jeffrey Porro), opened Christmas Day, 2007, directed by Denzel Washington, and starring Academy Award winners Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker. The movie was a Golden Globe Award Best Picture nominee, and won 4 NAACP Image Wards, including Best Picture. Eisele’s script received an Image Award nomination for Best Screenplay, and won the Writers Guild of America’s Paul Selvin Award and The Christopher Award. The movie captured the Producers Guild of America’s Stanley Kramer Award, the National Board of Review’s Freedom of Expression Award, the Women Film Critics Circle’s Josephine Baker Award, and the African American Film Critics Association’s Best Picture Award. Eisele’s original screenplay, “Patriots,” began principal photography on April 1, 2008. Tim Story is directing, Forest Whitaker is starring, and The Weinstein Company and I Am Entertainment are producing. Eisele wrote “3: The Dale Earnhardt Story” for ESPN, 2004, second highest rated basic cable movie of that year. He executive produced the Showtime series, “Resurrection Blvd.,” in 2000 and 2001. The show won the ALMA for Outstanding Television Series in 2001. Eisele received a Writers Guild Award nomination for his “Nino Del Polvo” episode of “Resurrection Blvd.” in 2002. He garnered another Writers Guild Award nomination in 1995, and a PEN Literary Award nomination (1996), for his USA Event Movie, “Lily In Winter.” He co-executive produced the movie as well. Eisele’s first Writers Guild Award nomination was for the Showtime Movie, “Last Light,” in 1993. He executive-produced the movie and acted in scenes with stars Kiefer Sutherland and Forest Whitaker.
Andrew Klavan is the author of such bestselling novels as True Crime, filmed by Clint Eastwood, and Don't Say A Word, filmed starring Michael Douglas. He has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award five times and won twice. He wrote the screenplays to the Michael Caine film A Shock to the System, based on the novel by Simon Brett, and to the recent horror remake One Missed Call. He is a contributing editor to City Journal, the magazine of the Manhattan Institute think tank. His essays appear regularly in the LA Times and have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and elsewhere. His latest novel, Empire of Lies, is due out in July 2008.
Deborah Pratt is a 27-year veteran of the entertainment industry. Her credits include co-executive producer, as well as head writer of the award winning Sci-Fi series, “Quantum Leap,” which aired for five years, was awarded multiple Emmys, 2 Golden Globes and numerous other prestigious awards. As a producer, she is a four-time Emmy nominee and Golden Globe nominee. As a television writer, Ms. Pratt was awarded the Lillian Gish Award from Women in Film, The Angel Award, The Golden Block Award and five B.E.N. awards. As a producer, she is a five-time Emmy nominee as well as a Golden Globe nominee. Ms. Pratt made her directorial debut with “Girlfriends,” a short film, written and produced by her in association with the American Film Institute. “Girlfriends” won multiple national and international awards. Her most recent directing endeavor, a feature length film “Cora Unashamed,” brought in PBS’s highest ratings for a dramatic movie and just released on DVD. Other projects currently in release for her company, V Global Media Inc, are the worlds of THE VISION QUEST™ franchise launched in 2007. The Vision Quest’s Book One—The Age of Light, was released to critical acclaim first as a novel and interactive site that revealed the world of a thrilling, probable future on Earth as seen through the eyes of a young hero. Book Two —The Odyssey, is due in book stores July 2008. These elements will be the first of numerous projects being developed for her multi platform, branded entertainment experience The Vision Quest. Currently, Ms Pratt is attached to direct Chevalier and Antoinett, staring Terrance Howard. This film is a period love story inspired by the lives of violinist, composer and France’s greatest swordsman, Chevalier de Saint George and the woman who loved and erased him from history, Marie Antoinette.
Ellen Sandler received an Emmy nomination as a Co-Executive Producer of the CBS hit Everybody Loves Raymond, and is the author of The TV Writers Workbook (Bantam/Dell, 2007). She has worked as a writer/producer for many other network television comedies including ABC’s long running series, Coach and has created original pilots for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox Family, Disney Channel, and Oxygen, which featured stars Kathy Baker, Katey Sagal, Susan St. James and Megan Mullally. She has been a consultant on pilots developed for The Australian Children's Television Network and the CBC, Canada. Ellen is also a playwright and the Co-Founder of the newly established Jewish Women's Theatre in Los Angeles. Her short play "Jewish Roots" was recently performed as a fundraiser for the WGA Strike Fund and starred Fran Dresher. More info can be found at her Website.
While all guest appearances have been confirmed, special circumstances occasionally make it necessary to change scheduled events.