Dear Festival Friends,

If you’re a Judy Blume fan (and who isn’t?), you likely have a totemic book, the one that got you through a particularly tricky stage of childhood or adolescence. If your family drove you nuts, it might have been Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing or another book from the Fudge series. If you lost a parent, perhaps Tiger Eyes helped. Any girl trying to navigate puberty inevitably found her way to Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Blume’s most popular book. And if you were a teenager in the throes of first love, there was Forever…, in particular that chapter—chapter 12, no doubt some of the most heavily thumbed pages in your school library.

Today we celebrate Blume’s birthday, but really, she’s ageless. In the decades since she published her first novel, Iggie’s House, her work has stayed relevant, owing to her empathetic and honest treatment of issues that bedevil us all: friends, family, sex, death, class, religion, self-image, and, yes, periods. We introduce her books to our children, and the wisdom is passed along. As The Atlantic noted, “Today’s 12-year-olds have the entire internet at their disposal; they hardly need novels to learn about puberty and sex. But kids are still kids, trying to figure out who they are and what they believe in … They—we—still need Judy Blume.” Proof: the 2023 documentary Judy Blume Forever, which won a Peabody Award, and the film adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which was a box office hit fifty-three years after the book came out.

It’s no surprise that Blume is also a longtime champion of intellectual freedom and has worked for years to support teachers and librarians in their fight against book bans. Blume herself has been banned, as well as castigated by people like Pat Buchanan, the right-wing commentator who asked her in a 1980s television interview why she was so preoccupied with “bodily functions” like masturbation. (“Are you hung up about masturbation?” Blume replied.) Her activism, along with her many bestselling books, including Wifey, Summer Sisters, and two other excellent novels for adults, have earned her dozens of honors, among them a National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle, and the Library of Congress’s Living Legend award.

We’re so happy to celebrate this beloved living legend on her birthday and look forward to welcoming her at the Festival in May.

Reminder: A Word with Erik Larson and Hampton Sides

Tickets are still available for “A Word with Writers,” featuring Erik Larson in conversation with Santa Fe’s own Hampton Sides, on Friday, March 27, at the historic KiMo Theatre at 423 Central Ave. NW in Albuquerque. This event, sponsored by Bookworks and the Albuquerque Public Library Foundation, in partnership with the Festival, celebrates the paperback release of Larson’s book The Demon of Unrest and is presented in collaboration with AMP Concerts. Admission includes a paperback copy of The Demon of Unrest and a donation to the Albuquerque Public Library Foundation. Click here for information.

Board of Directors
Edward Gale, Chair

Janet Bailey | Juliet Erickson

Andrea Fellows Fineberg | Jenny Kimball

James McGrath Morris | Carmella Padilla

Jenna Scanlan | Mary Sloane

Maria Gale, Ex Officio

Founders
Clare Hertel | Carmella Padilla | Mark Bryant