The Santa Fe International Literary Festival, sometimes called the "intellectual’s Coachella", drew about 20,000 attendees to the Santa Fe Community Convention Center from May 15–17.
Tickets sold-out early, and though top-shelf ticket prices were steep, the festival actively pushed back against an elitist atmosphere, providing about 2000 free tickets to teachers, librarians, students and New Mexico booklovers who might otherwise not be able to attend.
This Green Left reporter was fortunate to be granted media access to the entire festival and also attended the cheerful, relaxing pre-festival Writing on the Rails trip with poets Hakim Bellamy and Logan Phillips, and the Community Writing Event hosted by Santa Fe Public Library.
The Festival was co-founded by public relations professional Clare Hertel, editor/publisher Mark Bryant, and award-winning author/journalist Carmella Padilla. This year, the festival is led by Executive Director Megan Mulry and Board Chair Edward Gale. A well organised and cheerful crew of paid staff and volunteers keeps this annual event thriving.
Centered around diversity, resistance to authoritarianism, patriarchy and awareness of global change, this year’s program wove together political and environmental panels with profound, moving personal conversations leavened by humour and satire.
It successfully transformed intellectual dialogue into a vital, soulful community experience, deftly blending global literary heavyweights with a deeply localised focus and confirming its status as an unparalleled international cultural gathering in the South West.
Curation this year prioritised prominent names while championing marginalised voices, women and authors of colour, who made up more than three-quarters of the lineup. Featured were legendary writers and thinkers such as Judy Blume, Ocean Vuong, Irish author and poet Colm Tóibín and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and chronicler of the US migration of peoples out of oppression, Isabel Wilkerson.
Current and former US Poets Laureate Ada Limón (interviewed conversationally by Jake Skeets, current poet laureate of the Navajo Nation) and Arthur Sze brought profound emotional depth to the Main Stage.
Unconventional and urgent panels took centre stage. Environmental and investigative journalists such as Mariah Blake, Caroline Fraser and Laura Paskus drew huge, riveted crowds.
A standout initiative this year was the focus on the next generation of readers. The festival hosted eight popular social media "book influencers", exposing more than a million young followers to the power of long-form reading and classical literature.
Community writing workshops at the downtown Santa Fe Public Library allowed residents to engage directly with esteemed regional wordsmiths including several poets laureate.
What truly sets this festival apart is its setting. Attendees enjoyed a vibrant mix of cosy indoor conversations and regional exploration. Unconventional programming included literary day trips to sites like the School for Advanced Research (SAR) campus, Taos area literary sites and intimate conversations hosted alongside art tours and meditation sessions. And of course, the art galleries, craft shops and restaurants of Santa Fe provided extracurricular fun for both locals and out-of-towners.
Santa Fe’s reputation for social concern and community solidarity was demonstrated by the sorrowful but ultimately encouraging memorial rally at Santa Fe Plaza on Sunday evening for a beloved young Santa Fe woman who recently was tragically slain in another state. Many festival attendees, alerted during her main stage talk by author Rebecca Solnit, attended, as did faith leaders and indigenous ceremony facilitators.
The festival’s lineup celebrated marginalised voices — centred largely on women, LGBTQ+ folks, and writers of colour. The narrative nonfiction master Isabel Wilkerson opened the weekend with a breathtaking address, setting an intellectual and emotional tone that rippled through the rest of the festival.
Bestselling authors Lauren Groff and Susan Orlean drew huge crowds and offered deep, conversational dives into the art of storytelling and environmentalism. Local and emerging storytellers like Deborah Jackson Taffa, Laura Paskus, and Arthur Sze grounded the event in the rich literary soil of New Mexico, while Hakim Bellamy’s astute conversation with anthropologist Jason De León took us into the murky world of Latin American border-crossing and human smuggling.
Ocean Vuong’s relaxed conversation with Rebecca Solnit was a breathtaking masterclass in vulnerability. The conversation was prefaced by a special prelude reading from Sze, which set a perfectly meditative tone for the evening.
A major spotlight of the weekend, the event brilliantly intertwined personal grief, radical tenderness, and Vuong’s magically entrancing prose. Vuong — bestselling author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and The Emperor of Gladness — read a few short, devastatingly lyrical passages that left the audience completely spellbound. His soft, deliberate delivery of lines focusing on loss and second chances was undeniably the emotional anchor of the festival.
When reflecting on his own writing process, Vuong discussed how writing is an act of preserving the people we lose. He noted that allowing oneself to be "soft" is the ultimate act of rebellion in a rigid world.
While there was much profundity in the weekend’s presentations, there was also much entertainment, joyful enlightenment and even out right raucous laughter as when Irish wit, fiction writer and poet Tóibín regaled both audience and National Public Radio’s Scott Simon with gently ribald tales and James McBride and Carl Hiaasen aimed diverse, sharply satirical laser lights to cut into our current political darkness.
Underground resistance New Mexico reporter Jack Kiley delivered a master class in gonzo ghost-writing after hours in Santa Fe’s beloved dive Evangelo’s, while AMP Concerts capped off the weekend with a stunning concert by Texas guitar master Eric Johnson at The Lensic.
This festival perfectly encapsulated the spirit of Santa Fe. The Bookworks pop-up bookshop operated as a vibrant, buzzing hub where readers could grab books and immediately meet authors in the courtyard. Paired with accessible, free community events and strong efforts by the organisers, the festival managed to feel open, welcoming, and deeply connected to the City Different.
With an estimated US$22 million (A$31m) economic impact on the city, the Santa Fe International Literary Festival is a triumph of community building. It proves that the written word is thriving, offering a nourishing and inspiring alternative to modern digital consumption.
[For future updates, schedules, and information on next year's early bird ticketing, visit the official Santa Fe International Literary Festival site sfinternationallitfest.org.]