MILFORD SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' CONFERENCE

   Annual writers' workshop founded in 1956, held at Milford, Pennsylvania, where several sf writers - including one of its founders, Damon KNIGHT - have lived at various times. (A writers' workshop - see also CLARION SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' WORKSHOP - includes sessions of mutual criticismof not yet published stories, interspersed with discussion groups on various professional problems.) The success of MSFWC, especially the camaraderie it inspired, was directly responsible for the setting up of the SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA. Robert SILVERBERG, Harlan ELLISON, Kate WILHELM, Terry CARR and Samuel R. DELANY are among the many who wereat some period regular Milford attenders. Ideally, the workshop (open only to published sf writers) had a balance between beginner writers and more experienced professionals. It was felt by some critics that Milford attenders constituted a powerful in-group in sf (particularly since editors of important anthology series attended) and that they received preferential treatment by publishers; hence the nickname "Milford Mafia". Founder member James BLISH and his wife, J.A. LAWRENCE, moved to the UK,where they set up a UK Milford in 1972, coincidentally the year in which the US Milford was officially pronounced dead. This was held until 1988, out of terminological nostalgia, at Milford-on-Sea in Hampshire each autumn; thereafter it was held at Cheltenham (1989-90) and Margate (1991 onwards). Richard COWPER and Christopher PRIEST were two regular early attenders; more recent regulars have included Mary GENTLE, Colin GREENLAND and Diana Wynne JONES.

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