Milford

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.

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Convention
	1956—1972

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