Writers Like Us

Barnaby Conrad (1922-2013) was an American author, artist, nightclub proprietor, bullfighter, and filmmaker. After graduating from Yale, Conrad served from 1943 to 1946 as the U.S. vice consul in Seville, Malaga, and Barcelona. While in Spain, he studied bullfighting and became the only American to have fought in that country, Mexico, and Peru. In 1947, he served as secretary to Sinclair Lewis, the first American author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. John Steinbeck chose Conrad's 1952 novel Matador as his favorite book of the year, and it was translated into over 20 languages. Conrad started the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in 1973, inviting well-known authors such as Eudora Welty, Ray Bradbury, Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, and Ross Macdonald. His charcoal portraits of Truman Capote, James Michener, and Alex Haley are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Barnaby Conrad III (b. 1952) majored in painting at Yale and became an artist, art critic, and author of twelve non-fiction books, including Absinthe: History in a Bottle, Ghost Hunting in Montana, and Jacques Villegle and the Streets of Paris. A former magazine editor at Horizon and Forbes Life, he was a special correspondent in Paris for the San Francisco Chronicle and now teaches aspiring authors at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. He and his family live in Accomac, Virginia and San Francisco.

"Barnaby Conrad's engaging and witty memoir, about his odd duties as secretary and companion to Sinclair Lewis, vividly captures the emotionally demanding and tormented life of the once-successful writer." --Jeffrey Meyers, author of Parallel Lives "Sinclair Lewis in his sunset years: indepensable biographical material and a joy to read!" --Richard Lingeman, author of Sinclair Lewis, Rebel from Main Street Before he went on to write his iconic bestselling novel, Matador, young Barnaby Conrad spent a memorable, at times harrowing, summer as secretary to America's first Nobel Literature laureate, Sinclair Lewis. Now Conrad's son and namesake has shaped his father's memoir into a riveting tale about what it was like to be mentored by this ultimately tragic figure who had been the dominant literary figure of his day. The result is a lively, fascinating, anecdote-rich account as well as a cautionary tale. --Christopher Buckley, author of Losing Mum and Pup