About Us

Our Mission

The Santa Fe International Literary Festival connects writers, readers, and thinkers—from around the world and close to home—in the celebration of words and story.

Our Vision

The Festival believes in the power of story as an invitation to learn about ourselves and others—and to create meaning and community at a time of extraordinary change. In a world convulsed by conflict, and where tolerance is in short supply, books are banned, and truth is under assault, the Festival is a light against the dark, where words matter and our shared humanity is celebrated.

We envision the Festival as a collaborative event where world-class authors and passionate readers listen, talk, and think freely about their interests, values, and experiences, a space where preconceived notions are challenged and common ground is shared.

We also see the Festival as a way to celebrate our city’s deep literary history and diverse community of writers. And we see it as an opportunity to foster a love of storytelling among young writers and readers, both at the Festival itself and beyond.

Our History

The Santa Fe International Literary Festival grew out of the Santa Fe Literary Festival, which was launched in May 2022 by co-founders Clare Hertel and Julia Leonard. Thousands of people attended talks and conversations by world-class authors from near and far, setting the stage for the Festival’s future. The name change represents our desire to reflect the vast diversity of the world’s literary community as we strive to build an extraordinary local/global gathering of writers, readers, and thinkers.

The Santa Fe International Literary Festival is a grassroots organization rooted in a love of literature and a commitment to community. The Festival’s co-founders live in Santa Fe and have all worked for decades in the literary field. They share the task of curating, programming, and promoting the Festival, along with a small and dedicated staff.

our founders

Clare Hertel, co-founder

heads the Festival’s marketing and public relations efforts. In 1994, Clare launched her public relations firm, Clare Hertel

Communications, in Santa Fe and New York, and her clients have ranged from large, well-established companies to startups. She is known for shaping brands and messaging, building strong relationships with major media outlets, and placing feature stories in such venues as NPR, CNN, CBS, ABC, PBS, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, O: The Oprah Magazine, and countless others.
Clare’s clients have included such brands as the National Geographic Society and National Geographic Television, The North Face, Outside magazine, the Trust for Public Land, IMAX Films, the Rocky Mountain Institute, the International Folk Art Market | Santa Fe, and several major book publishers. Clare has long-standing relationships with leading reporters, editors, and producers throughout the journalistic community—in both traditional and digital media and in regional as well as national and international markets.

Carmella Padilla, co-founder

is an author and journalist who explores intersections in art, culture, and history. She has written several books, including The

Work of Art: Folk Artists in the 21st Century; El Rancho de las Golondrinas: Living History in New Mexico’s La Ciénega Valley; Low ’n Slow: Lowriding in New Mexico; and The Chile Chronicles: Tales of a New Mexico Harvest, which received the Historical Society of New Mexico’s Ralph Emerson Twitchell Award as a significant contribution to the field of history.
Carmella’s 2015 book A Red Like No Other: How Cochineal Colored the World, co-edited with Dr. Barbara Anderson, won the College Art Association’s 2017 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for distinguished scholarship in art history. In 2017, Carmella edited Borderless: The Art of Luis Tapia, exploring the art and life of a pioneering New Mexican Chicano sculptor. And in 2021, she collaborated on Gustave Baumann’s Book of Saints, a limited-edition book from the New Mexico History Museum’s Palace Press featuring thirty-four Baumann woodcuts of New Mexico santos.
A native New Mexican, Carmella brings decades of community volunteerism and activism to her Festival role, helping the event reflect the best of our city and state through her experience, knowledge, and understanding of local cultures and communities. She has been recognized for her work as a writer, a champion of the arts in New Mexico, and a volunteer in various community-based initiatives and is the recipient of the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Santa Fe Mayor’s Award, and the New Mexico Community Foundation Luminaria Award. Carmella’s current projects include a book on twentieth-century New Mexican furniture and a memoir.

Mark Bryant, co-founder

chief curator of the Festival, is an editor, publisher, and journalist who has worked with both emerging writers and winners of

the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Booker Prize. He has been the editor of Outside, Men's Journal, and Play: The New York Times Sports Magazine, as well as an executive editor of HarperCollins and the editor in chief and cofounder of Byliner, which helped pioneer long-form fiction and nonfiction storytelling in the digital space. He’s currently helping to lead a new original publishing program at Scribd, the subscription reading service, and is the executive director of Assignment, a new investigative journalism nonprofit, co-founded with Jon Krakauer and Linda Moore, dedicated to mentoring and supporting emerging writers.
Mark has been fortunate to publish a range of authors including Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace, Roxane Gay, Annie Proulx, Michael Lewis, Jon Krakauer, Ann Patchett, Colum McCann, Charles Yu, Susan Orlean, David Quammen, Amy Tan, Alexandra Fuller, Richard Powers, and Lauren Groff. He led Outside to five National Magazine Awards, including a record three consecutive awards for General Excellence, and his work with The New York Times, Men’s Journal, and Byliner earned several additional finalist nominations. He’s also consulted for publishers and media companies including Condé Nast, Time Inc., Hearst, and The New York Times, and for the past several years has been a journalist in residence at Colorado College, teaching narrative nonfiction and bringing in guest speakers including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Barry Lopez, Roxane Gay, Peter Heller, and David Quammen.

Our team

The Festival is fueled by the energy of a small staff of professionals whose expertise and enthusiasm helps bring the Festival to life.

Clare Hertel

executive director & Co-founder

Claire Zahner

Assistant to the Executive director

Sandy Wylie

Director Volunteers and TICKETING

Marlene Saritzky and Susan Burks

author relations

Will Palmer

COPY Editor

Catherine Casalino

creative director

Alec Alderman

web development

Noah Hilsenrad

creative support

Melanie Corocoran

Development Consultant

Mary Handsaker

Partnership Manager

Henry Lopez

Advertising Support

Kelly Koepke

Social Media Manager

Mara Harris, Kelly Koepke, and Kim Weiss

volunteer marketing support

Our founding AdvisErs

The Festival benefits from the creativity, inspiration, and wise counsel of a bighearted and generous group of advisers. They provide support and assistance in every aspect of the Festival, transforming our literary dreams into reality.

Janet Bailey

Don Barliant

Susan Bergholz

Steve Cantrell

Judith Espinar

Mara Harris

Joanna Hurley

James McGrath Morris

Jill Momaday

Jack Parsons

Douglas Preston

Marlene Saritzky

Hampton Sides

David Skolkin

Bert Snyder