Dear Festival Friends,

It’s wonderful to be back in touch. We’ve been busy this summer and early fall, brainstorming with authors, fine-tuning our programming, and making sure the Festival is fulfilling its mission: to connect writers, readers, and thinkers to the power of words and story. At a time of great global conflict and an alarming lack of tolerance and civility, we see the Festival—and the community it represents—as a place where great storytelling can illuminate empathy, compassion, and our shared humanity when it’s needed most. Of course, it’s also a place where we can all have fun together.

So before this lap around the sun is finished, mark your calendars for the third annual Santa Fe International Literary Festival: May 17–19, 2024. And begin enjoying sneak peaks at some of next year’s lineup of more than 30 events. Many more authors will be announced in the coming weeks, so please stay tuned.

First up:

DAVID GRANN is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of several No. 1 New York Times nonfiction bestsellers, including The Lost City of Z, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, The White Darkness, and Flowers of the Killer Moon, which has been adapted into a film by none other than Martin Scorsese that has been getting rave reviews and premieres today, Friday, October 20. Next up for Grann and Scorsese: a film based on David’s most recent book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

JULIA ALVAREZ, the legendary, much-beloved author of In the Time of Butterflies, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, After Life, and many other internationally bestselling novels for adults and young people, was awarded the National Medal of the Arts by President Barack Obama in 2013. Her gorgeous new novel, Cemetery of Untold Stories, will be published next April, just in time for the Festival.

JAVIER ZAMORA’s stunning memoir Solito is the harrowing story of his 3,000-mile, four-month journey—at the age of nine—from El Salvador through Guatemala and Mexico and across the border into the United States to reunite with his parents. It received resounding praise from the likes of Sandra Cisneros and Dave Eggers, quickly became a New York Times bestseller, and was named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Washington Post, Vulture, and The New York Times Book Review.

And then there’s Santa Fe’s own HAMPTON SIDES, friend, neighbor, founding adviser to the Festival, and author of several bestselling narrative histories, including Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound on His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice, and On Desperate Ground, which was named among the ten best books of 2018 by The Washington Post. His latest, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, will be out in April.

If you’re already familiar with the Festival’s Young Writers and Readers program, you probably know about our work with Narrative 4 and the inspiring story exchange Colum McCann and his colleagues hosted last year with community college and high school students just ahead of the Festival. We’re thrilled to tell you they will be continuing their groundbreaking programming in Santa Fe—beginning next week! If you’d like to get involved, please click here to visit Narrative 4’s website and registration link. There will be a presentation with Colum and Ishmael Beah in attendance on October 27; the training will take place October 28. 

This Festival would not be possible without the generous support of the Gale Family Foundation, Santa Fe Tourism, and so many other donors and supporters. We couldn’t be more grateful to everyone who bought tickets, made tax-deductible contributions, and attended the Festival in 2023. We hope you’ll want to get even more involved this year. Please consider making a contribution below, no matter the size. It means everything to us!

Donations are tax-deductible