WRITERS SHIFT CONVENTION TO SIKESTON

The Heartland Writers Conference, an annual confab attracting 150 writers and would-be writers from across the Midwest and a number of editors and agents from New York, will move from Cape Girardeau to Sikeston this year.

The conference has been held in Cape Girardeau the past five years. This year's edition is scheduled for Aug. 3 through 5 at the Coach House Inn in Sikeston.

The conference was relocated for financial reasons, said Jacqueline Close, its coordinator.

Operating with an annual budget of $15,000 to $17,000, the conference will save more than $1,000 by moving to Sikeston, Close said.

A majority of its expenses are incurred bringing the editors and agents from New York, Close said. The conference also provides lodging for the speakers, who this year include 12 authors, a motion picture studio representative, a forensic pathologist, a book distribution executive and a book sales representative.

Last year, the conference was held at the Victorian Inn, where the sleeping room rate was $49. But the Victorian Inn already is booked for the August dates this year, as is the Drury Inn.

With this year's dates already distributed in brochures, that left the conference coordinators to choose between the Holiday Inn's higher rates or moving to another city.

The conference requires a facility that can provide lodging, dining and meeting rooms under one roof.

The sleeping room rate offered the conference at the Holiday Inn initially was $65, later negotiated to $60, according to Connie Bennett, a Dexter member of the Heartland Writers Guild.

"We really could not afford to raise the cost to the participants that much," Bennett said.

Dan Drury, president of MidAmerica Hotels Corp., said the franchised Holiday Inn costs much more to operate than the company's Victorian Inn or Drury Lodge, making it impossible to lower prices enough to accommodate the conference.

"It's a price you pay sometimes," he said. "I would have liked to have had them."

The motel in Sikeston is smaller than the Drury hostelries, limiting this year's conference to 150 participants.

Close said the Cape Girardeau Visitors and Convention Bureau gave the conference plenty of support during its years in the city

Mary Miller, director of the Cape Girardeau Visitors and Convention Bureau, was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Based on national averages, participants in the three-day conference would have spent nearly $60,000 in Cape Girardeau.

Close said the Sikeston Chamber of Commerce is going to help promote this year's conference. In addition, the Book Bug bookstore in Sikeston is developing an event called the Heartland Festival of Books.

During the first two years of the conference, Southeast Missouri State University was involved and provided meeting space. The relationship ended when the conference decided to move to a convention center.

"We felt strongly that the best writers' conferences are held under one roof," said Bennett, a writer of contemporary and historical romances.

Conference organizers said Cape Girardeau and even St. Louis will be considered as sites when the 1996 conference is planned.

"It was a very difficult decision to make to move the conference," she said. "We felt Cape offered a lot."