This year's Santa Barbara Writers Conference (June 18 to 23) features 5 authors as the conference's evening guest speakers . Thursday’s Speaker, Shannon Pufahl is the author of On Swift Horses, the critically acclaimed debut novel which takes place in the midcentury American West. The New York Times Review of Books said this about her novel: “The spaces she creates for her characters—San Diego’s languid Chester Hotel hiding in plain sight, Tijuana rendered as an underworld—have the aura of realms.” Pufahl grew up in rural Kansas and teaches at Stanford University, where she was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction. She lives in Monterey, CA, with her wife and their dog. There will be a book signing after the talk.