The beloved Santa Barbara Writers Conference which is responsible for fostering many best selling writers will celebrate its 50TH birthday in June of 2022 and it would not exist at all if not for the inimitable Barnaby Conrad, artist, best selling author, nightclub proprietor, bullfighter, boxer, and American Vice Consul to Seville, Málaga, and Barcelona from 1943-46.

While in Spain, Barny studied bullfighting with Juan Belmonte, Manolete, and Carlos Arruza. In 1945 he appeared on the same program with Belmonte and was awarded the ears of the bull. He is the only American male to have fought in Spain, Mexico and Peru. After his stint in Spain, he moved to Lima, Peru. He was known as "El Niño de California" ("The California Kid").

In 1947, he worked as secretary to famed novelist Sinclair Lewis and published his first novel, The Innocent Villa , in 1948. It largely went unnoticed, but his second novel, Matador, sold 3,000,000 copies. John Steinbeck selected Matador as his favorite book of the year, and the novel has been translated into 28 languages.

Royalties from Matador provided Barny with the capital to open El Matador nightclub in San Francisco in 1953. Herb Caen, noting that Matador was the publisher's suggested alternative to the original title Barny had given his second novel, commented on Conrad naming his nightclub after his first best seller: "Who'd ever go eat at a restaurant called Day of Fear?"

In 1958, Barny was gored, almost fatally in a bullfight that was part of a charity event. After learning of the incident, Eva Gabor is said to have run into Noël Coward at Sardi's in New York and asked him, "Did you hear about poor Barnaby? He was terribly gored in Spain." Coward replied, "Oh, thank heavens. I thought you said he was bored."

Barny Conrad started the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in 1973 at the Cate School, inviting such well-known authors as Eudora Welty, Gore Vidal, Joan Didion and Ross Macdonald. 

Barny's charcoal portraits of Truman Capote and James Michener hang in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. In 2006, the Spanish writer Salvador Gutiérrez Solís published his biography, Barnaby Conrad, A Spanish Passion (Fundación José Manuel Lara), which tells the story of Barny's life in Spain and his connection with the world of bullfighting.