Monte Schulz

Voice & Style

Finding voice and style in your work

Monday - Friday
1:00 -3:30 PM

This is a workshop about finding the right voice or style to fit your story or novel or poem. Writers are most known for how they tell a story, rather than the tale itself. Style is how we as writers present ourselves to the world.

Message to Students

All I ask of my students is that they try to write the best they can. There’s no reward in striving to be mediocre, no matter what genre you choose. If it’s your first time attending the conference, find a workshop environment that feels helpful and comfortable. Don’t worry about doing everything. Mingle as best you can, though, and remember that a conference is a society of people like yourself who are in love with the written word.

Bio

Monte Schulz received his M.A. in American Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and spent 12 years writing Crossing Eden, a novel about the Jazz Age, which was published in 2016. Metropolis, his dystopian 2022 novel about a college student named Julian Brehm drawn into the world of political revolution, a century-long eugenics war, and a vast undercity addressed themes of morality, societal collapse, and the horrors of conflict rooted in eugenics.

His latest novel, Undercity (2026), is a companion piece that explores the lives of outcasts and the disenfranchised who live in an underground labyrinth in a totalitarian society. Its message is chilling in light of global politics, which reflect a trend toward democratic decline and the rise of the strongman. Schulz has been teaching at SBWC since 2001 and became the conference’s owner in 2010.

Writing Tip I Live By

There is no such thing as writer’s block.Try to write a page a day. If that doesn’t work, do half a page. Anything is better than nothing.

Recommended Authors

H.G.Wells, Ray Bradbury, Carl Sandburg,Thomas Wolfe,Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor, James Jones, Allen Ginsburg, Joan Didion, Larry Brown and Cormac McCarthy. Schulz’s favorite novel is Carson McCullers’ The Member Of The Wedding.