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The Key West Literary Seminar is a non-profit organization and annual conference for writers held in Key West, FL, founded in 1983 by the late novelist, David Kaufelt (1939-2014), and his wife, Lynn Kaufelt, who is the current President of the festival. David and Lynn Kaufelt moved to Key West from New York in 1974, shortly after David’s debut novel, Six Months with an Older Woman, was published. The idea for the Literary Seminar came about after a meeting David Kaufelt had with a group of New York publishers. The Council for Florida Libraries was hosting a lecture series and Kaufelt wanted the publishers to send a group of their top writers to attend; however, despite the long literary history of Key West and South Florida more broadly, with writers such as James Merrill, Thomas McGuane, and Tennessee Williams in residence at that time and Ernest Hemingway and Elizabeth Bishop having previously written books while on the island, the New York publishers felt that in Florida there was generally a lack of interest in the literary and refused Kaufelt’s request. A few years later, in 1983, the Kaufelts decided to organize a literary festival that would celebrate the literary history of Key West, while seeking to be a platform for the wider development of an entrenched literary culture.

KWLS meets for four days every January and explores a new theme year; previous themes have been on topics such as, “Tennessee Williams in Key West”; “American Writers and The Natural World”; “Crossing Borders: The Immigrant Voice in American Literature”; and “Writers of the Caribbean.” Previously held at the Florida Keys Community College and currently at the San Carlos Institute, the conference is attended by writers and readers from all over the world, although its readings, conversations, lectures, and panel discussions are capped at a maximum of 375 participants, so as to ensure a distinctive intimate experience. In addition to the more typical conference activities, David Kaufelt organized and ran a guided literary walking tour to better acquaint conference attendees with the Key West architecture that was the backdrop to many notable works of literature; this tour currently operates year-round. Key West’s architectural heritage was particularly important to the Kaufelts specifically; they restored and renovated three homes in Key West’s Old Town, and Lynn Kaufelt also wrote a book, Key West Writer’s and Their Houses, on the subject. More recently, in 2019, KWLS acquired the home of the celebrated poet Elizabeth Bishop, who lived on White Street during the 1930s and 1940s; it is their future goal to restore it to what it would have been like when she resided there.

Aside from the four-day conference, KWLS also runs a Writer’s Workshop Program – a small gathering of up to twelve writers and faculty to explore writing craft, held at various locations throughout Key West’s “Old Town”; and a Young Writer’s Studio, which offers summer writing instruction to local high school students. In order to share both the conference’s output and also, more generally, Key West’s literary history with as many people as possible, KWLS began their Audio Archives Project, whereby unique presentations from the conference are uploaded online to be viewed by people all over the world. In addition, KWLS’s open-access blog, LITTORAL, offers essays, interviews, and more pertaining to Key West and its literary history.

Laura Bass
UGrow Fellow for the Department of Manuscripts and Archives Management, 2019-2020.