Milford

From Fancyclopedia 3
(Redirected from Milford-conference)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The Milford SF Writers' Conference (usually known as just "Milford") was an influential SF writers’ event founded in 1956 by Damon Knight, James Blish, and Judith Merril, in Milford, Pennsylvania, where Merril then lived and where Knight had also lived.

People attending the first conference included Ed Emshwiller, Carol Emshwiller, J. Martin Graetz (Official Fan), Katherine MacLean, Robert Silverberg, and Barbara Silverberg.

It was a week-long meeting of a dozen writers who criticized each other’s work in intense detail. The sense of solidarity helped lead to the formation of SFWA. However, "disaffected authors began griping about a “‘Milford Mafia’ that was endangering SF's unique virtues by imposing literary standards essentially alien to the field.”

Milford ended in 1972, coincidentally the year Blish moved to the U.K. and started a similar conference there that still continues.

Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.



Convention
19561972
This is a convention page. Please extend it by adding information about the convention, including dates, GoHs, convention chairman, locale, sponsoring organization, external links to convention pages, awards given, the program, notable events, anecdotes, pictures, scans of publications, pictures of T-shirts, con reports, etc.