2025 Featured Authors

Amy Tan

Beloved author of multiple New York Times bestsellers, including The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, and The Backyard Bird Chronicles

AMY TAN was still new to fiction when she sold her first novel in 1987, based on the strength of just a few chapters. The Joy Luck Club, inspired by the immigrant experience of her Chinese mother, was a surprise blockbuster. It spent more than forty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The 1993 film version of the novel has been inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry for its cultural significance. Tan’s subsequent novels, including The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and The Valley of Amazement, were also lauded for their thoughtful depiction of the lives of Chinese American women. Her latest book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, a New York Times No. 1 bestseller, is a celebration of the natural world featuring illustrations by Tan herself. Tan received the National Humanities Medal from President Joe Biden in 2021 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters the following year.

Terry Tempest Williams

Renowned naturalist, activist, and award-winning author of the environmental classics Refuge and An Unspoken Hunger

Affectionately known as “a citizen writer,” TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS is one of America’s most beloved environmental authors. A longtime naturalist and advocate for freedom of speech, she makes the case that environmental protection and social responsibility are matters of justice. Her books, considered modern-day classics, include the lyrical and haunting memoir Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field, and Finding Beauty in a Broken World. Williams was featured in Ken Burns’s acclaimed documentary The National Parks and has received many awards for her contributions to the environmental movement and the literature of the American West. In 2014, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Wilderness Act, she received the Sierra Club’s John Muir Award, honoring her distinguished record of leadership in conservation. A Utah native, Williams is co-founder of the University of Utah’s Environmental Humanities Graduate Program. She is currently writer-in-residence at Harvard Divinity School, where she focuses on the spiritual implications of climate change and other global crises.

Marie Arana

Award-winning author of LatinoLand, American Chica, and other books about the Hispanic experience

MARIE ARANA, a Peru native transplanted as a child to New Jersey, understands the complicated nuances of being Hispanic American. Her most recent book, the critically acclaimed LatinoLand, is a sweeping portrait of the United States’ “largest and least understood minority.” Something of a companion to LatinoLand is Arana’s book Silver, Sword, and Stone, a wide-ranging history of Latin America that celebrates the rich culture of the many diverse Hispanic groups that now call the U.S. home. Arana is also the author of the memoir American Chica, which was a National Book Award finalist, the novels Cellophane and Lima Nights, and a biography of the South American general and statesman Simón Bolívar. She won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature in 2020 and is the former—and first—literary director of the Library of Congress. For many years, she was the editor in chief of Book World at The Washington Post.

Jonathan Eig

Pulitzer Prize–winning author of biographies about Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, and Lou Gehrig

JONATHAN EIG has written about some of the most influential people of the twentieth century. The New York Times hailed his 2023 book King: A Life as the “definitive” biography of Martin Luther King Jr. A revealing portrait that broke fresh ground on King’s life and legacy, it won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Eig’s previous book, Ali: A Life, won the 2018 PEN America Literary Award and was an inspiration for the Ken Burns documentary Muhammad Ali. Esquire called Ali one of the twenty-five greatest biographies of all time. Eig’s ability to humanize larger-than-life characters was evident from his first book, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, which the Chicago Tribune called a “definitive” biography. A longtime Chicagoan and sports fan, Eig has also written biographies of Al Capone and Jackie Robinson.

Percival Everett

National Book Award winner, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and author of bitingly funny novels, including James, Erasure, The Trees, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier

PERCIVAL EVERETT is an overnight success forty years in the making. He was publishing brilliantly satirical novels to quiet acclaim before The Trees, his sly takedown of post–Jim Crow–era racists, was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2022. Everett’s sharp observations on race, politics, and history are on full display in his many novels, which inventively cross genres from westerns to thrillers to the retelling of Greek myths. Telephone, a tale playfully told three ways, each version slightly different and with a different ending, was a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Erasure, a scathing parody of the book industry, was adapted into the Oscar-nominated film American Fiction, starring Jeffrey Wright. Everett’s most recent book, James, reimagines Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, the enslaved runaway depicted by Twain as a sympathetic but secondary character. James was an instant New York Times bestseller and won the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction.

Miranda July

Filmmaker, actor, multimedia artist, and author of the provocative New York Times bestseller All Fours

“Gutsy, funny, wise, chaotic, dirty, panic-inducing.” New York magazine’s description of MIRANDA JULY’s latest novel could easily apply to all of the multitalented artist’s work. All Fours, an instant New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award in fiction, tracks the sexual obsessions of a woman confronting the unwelcome realities of middle age and menopause. Its thoughtful consideration of love, mortality, anxiety, and loneliness mirrors themes that run throughout July’s fiction as well as her films, including The Future, Kajillionaire,and the cult hit Me and You and Everyone We Know, which won the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a Special Jury Award at Sundance. July is also the author of the bestselling novel The First Bad Man and the story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You, winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and named a top ten book of 2007 by Time.

Colum McCann

National Book Award–winning author of Let the Great World Spin, TransAtlantic, and Apeirogon

COLUM McCANN is widely considered one of the most ambitious, transformative writers working today. His novel Let the Great World Spin won the 2009 National Book Award for Fiction and was recently named one of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by New York Times readers. Born and raised in Dublin, McCann is celebrated for both his lyrical prose and the empathy and humanity of his characters. His novels TransAtlantic and Apeirogon were long-listed for the Booker Prize, and he received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay of Everything in This Country Must, adapted from his short story. McCann’s most recent book, American Mother, tells the story of Diane Foley, whose son, the American journalist Jim Foley, was killed by ISIS. His latest novel, Twist, was published in March 2025. McCann is also the president and co-founder of the nonprofit global story exchange organization Narrative 4.

Viet Thanh Nguyen

Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer and bestselling award winners including A Man of Two Faces, The Committed, and The Refugees

VIET THANH NGUYEN was forty-four when he published his first novel, The Sympathizer, a stunning debut that went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. The book fulfilled Nguyen’s desire that his fiction be “as critical as it was creative.” A mind- and genre-bending look at the Vietnam War, The Sympathizer is a scathing, darkly funny critique of America’s actions before and after the conflict. It was adapted into a 2024 Emmy-nominated series on HBO, starring Robert Downey, Jr., Sandra Oh, and Hoa Xuande. Nguyen’s subsequent work also tackles displacement and the legacy of Vietnam and colonialism. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War was nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, and The Committed, a sequel to The Sympathizer, was a New York Times bestseller. Nguyen’s most recent book is the memoir A Man of Two Faces, which was long-listed for the National Book Award. His next book, the essay collection To Save and to Destroy, will be published in April 2025.

Michael Pollan

Master of thought-provoking bestsellers, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and How to Change Your Mind

MICHAEL POLLAN writes about the complicated, sometimes disastrous ways humans have domesticated the natural world. He is one of the country’s most trusted food experts, a reputation that began in 2001 with The Botany of Desire, an exploration of how plants have evolved to satisfy our various hungers. The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which examines America’s eating habits, was an instant No. 1 New York Times bestseller. The book sparked a national debate about our food industry and inspired the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. His 2018 book How to Change Your Mind, also an instant No. 1 Times bestseller, looks at how LSD and psilocybin are being used to treat depression, anxiety, and addiction. It was adapted into a four-part series on Netflix, as was his 2013 bestseller Cooked, about the history and science of cooking. His most recent book is This Is Your Mind on Plants, about our long and often addictive relationship with caffeine, opium, and mescaline. Pollan has won numerous writing and environmental awards and has been named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Heather Cox Richardson

Renowned historian and author of Democracy Awakening and the smash-hit Substack newsletter Letters from an American

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON writes about history in a way intended to leave readers feeling, in her words, “smarter, not dumber.” Her daily newsletter, Letters from an American, examines current events within the larger context of America’s past. Launched in 2019, it was a breakout success, hailed for its clarity and straightforward style, quickly making Richardson the No. 1 author on Substack, with more than one million subscribers. She has also written about the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the American West in award-winning books that chronicle the ups and downs of our democratic experiment. Her most recent book is the New York Times bestseller Democracy Awakening, which traces political extremism from the founders to Donald Trump and celebrates the progressive achievements that have kept authoritarianism at bay. Richardson teaches nineteenth-century history at Boston College and was named one of USA Today’s Women of the Year in 2022.

Hampton Sides

Author of bestselling narrative histories, including The Wide Wide Sea, Ghost Soldiers, and Blood and Thunder

HAMPTON SIDES, a longtime Santa Fean, got the idea for his first New York Times bestseller, Ghost Soldiers, while researching the lives of nine hundred New Mexican soldiers who were subjected to the torturous Bataan Death March during World War II. He followed Ghost Soldiers with some of today’s most gripping and readable historical narratives: Blood and Thunder, Hellhound on His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice, and On Desperate Ground, which The Washington Post named one of the Best Books of 2018. His latest, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, was named one of the ten best books of 2024 by The New York Times and landed on many other best-of-the-year lists, including Barack Obama’s. Sides’s journalism has been frequently anthologized, and he is a two-time National Magazine Award finalist and a recipient of the PEN USA Award for Nonfiction.

Deborah Jackson Taffa

National Book Award finalist and author of the acclaimed coming-of-age memoir Whiskey Tender.

DEBORAH JACKSON TAFFA is director of the MFA program in creative writing at the renowned Institute of American Indian Arts and a hometown treasure here in Santa Fe. Her memoir Whiskey Tender, about growing up as a mixed-tribe Native American torn by the pressures of assimilation, was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award and was named a best new book by The New Yorker and Oprah Daily. The Washington Post praised Whiskey Tender for its “mesmerizing dive into tumultuous childhood stories and its excavation of a particular place and time”—that being New Mexico’s Navajo territory in the 1970s and ’80s. Taffa is a 2022 winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History and has received fellowships from MacDowell, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Tin House, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. She is also editor in chief of the literary magazine River Styx.

Gabrielle Zevin

Novelist, screenwriter, and author of the breakout hit Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

GABRIELLE ZEVIN had already written a number of award-winning bestsellers before Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow made her a cultural icon. An engrossing, expansive story about friendship, love, and video game designers, the novel captured the hearts of readers, even those who’ve never touched a game console. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow was an instant New York Times bestseller and has been named by the Times as one of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. It was Amazon’s No. 1 book of 2022, and NPR called it “a big, beautifully written novel … that succeeds in being both serious art and immersive entertainment.” Zevin is also the author of the New York Times bestseller The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and several novels for young readers, including Elsewhere, named one of Time’s 100 Best YA Books of All Time. Zevin’s screenwriting work includes the screenplay for A.J. Fikry and the 2005 film Conversations with Other Women, for which she received an Independent Spirit Award nomination.

Danzy Senna

Bestselling author of the novel Colored Television and other wry, insightful books about the absurdities and challenges of being a mixed-race American

DANZY SENNA takes the stereotypes associated with being biracial—in particular, the tropes of the “tragic mulatto” and the “magical mulatto”—and turns them upside down. Her debut novel, Caucasia, won the 1998 Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times. Since then, Senna has become one of today’s most widely respected voices tackling multiracial and complex social identities. Her latest novel, the satirically playful Colored Television, is about a woman who looks to strike it rich as a television writer while struggling to finish her second novel (a “mulatto War and Peace”). Colored Television was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2024, a top ten book of the year by The Washington Post, and a Good Morning America Book Club pick.

Victoria Chang

Award-winning poet, essayist, multimedia artist, and children’s book author

VICTORIA CHANG has described great art as a “big door that everyone can enter.” Her own work is a wide-open door, guiding us through experiences and emotions we all share, from grief to isolation to familial love. Her poetry collection Obit, published during the Covid lockdown, chronicles the grief she felt after the 2015 death of her mother and mirrors the confusion and loss that flattened everyone during the pandemic. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her 2021 book Dear Memory is akin to a diary left open for all to see. A collection of personal photographs and ruminations, it pokes around in the murky places created by memories, loss, and the numbing details of daily life. Chang is also a Guggenheim Fellowship winner and the author of two children’s books. Her most recent poem collection, With My Back to the World, was named one of the best books of 2024 by NPR.

Ramona Emerson

Filmmaker and author of the celebrated debut novel Shutter and its sequel, Exposure

Before she was a novelist, RAMONA EMERSON worked as a photographer for the Albuquerque Police Department, documenting crime scenes, car accidents, and other grisly catastrophes. That experience informs her first novel, Shutter, an unforgettable thriller about a forensic photographer who, like Emerson, is a member of the Navajo Nation and is haunted (literally) by the victims she has photographed. Shutter was long-listed for the 2022 National Book Award, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, and was one of NPR’s books of the year. Its sequel, Exposure, was published last fall and named one of The Washington Post’s ten best thrillers of 2024. Emerson is also a filmmaker who runs the award-winning production company Reel Indian Pictures with her husband, the producer Kelly Byars.

Chris Rainier

Acclaimed photographer and filmmaker known for his work documenting endangered cultures around the world

CHRIS RAINIER is considered one of the leading cultural photographers of our time. In the 1980s, he was Ansel Adams’s last assistant, and he helped the renowned photographer fight for the protection of America’s wilderness treasures through the power of photography. An explorer whose passion for traditional cultures has led him to some of the most remote places on the planet, Rainier spent twenty years at the National Geographic Society as a National Geographic Fellow. In 2017 he founded the Cultural Sanctuaries Foundation, dedicated to preserving endangered cultures and languages worldwide. Rainier is also a Royal Geographic Society Fellow and has received the Explorers Club Lowell Thomas Award for his work in cultural preservation. He is the author of six books, including Mask, Sacred, The Future of Exploration, and the forthcoming Ancient Wisdom in a Modern World.

Roshi Joan Halifax

Buddhist teacher, author, and social and environmental activist

ROSHI JOAN HALIFAX is one of the country’s leading Buddhist teachers and the founder of Upaya Zen Center, here in Santa Fe. She is a lifelong conservationist and social activist whose work has been informed by her time spent in communities as culturally and geographically diverse as the Tibetan Plateau and the American prison system. She has a PhD in medical anthropology and was an honorary research fellow in medical ethnobotany at Harvard. Halifax is a pioneer in the field of end-of-life care and the author of many acclaimed books, including Being with Dying, Standing at the Edge, The Fruitful Darkness, and the children’s book Sophie Learns to Be Brave. Her latest book, In a Moment, in a Breath, is a collection of short meditations.

Henry Shukman

Zen master, poet, and award-winning author of the memoir One Blade of Grass

HENRY SHUKMAN’s early love of poetry led to an interest in the work of Chinese Zen poets and, ultimately, to Buddhism. Now a longtime Zen teacher, he is spiritual director emeritus of Mountain Cloud Zen Center, in Santa Fe. His 2019 memoir One Blade of Grass tells the story of how meditation helped him overcome depression and anxiety as a young man. Kirkus Reviews praised the book as “graceful, insightful, and disarmingly candid.” Shukman’s latest book is Original Love, a spiritual handbook of sorts for navigating life in the twenty-first century. Shukman’s poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Guardian, and the London Review of Books, and he is a co-creator of The Way, an app that helps users get started with meditation.

Dana Levin

Award-winning poet, essayist, and teacher

DANA LEVIN’s poems have been described by The New Yorker as “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Her subjects range widely—from childbirth to pets to writer’s block to Buddhism. She has even paid homage to her chiropractor. Her first book, In the Surgical Theatre, won the 2003 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award and was called “astonishing” by the late U.S. poet laureate Louise Glück. Her 2016 collection Banana Palace was a finalist for the Rilke Prize, and her latest book, Now Do You Know Where You Are, was a New York Times Notable Book and an NPR Books We Love selection. Levin has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is currently a distinguished writer in residence at Maryville University, in St. Louis.

Tommy Archuleta

Santa Fe poet laureate, punk rock drummer, and mental health and substance abuse counselor

Santa Fe Poet Laureate TOMMY ARCHULETA credits his emergence as a poet to music. “Drumming is one of the ways I hear the beats of a line of poetry before I get the words,” he has said. A former member of the cowboy punk band 23 More Minutes, he also credits Pablo Neruda as an early inspiration. Archuleta’s debut poetry collection, Susto (2023), pays tribute to his late mother and her work as a healer practicing the ancient art of curanderismo. His belief that literature can help us deal with trauma led him to the New Mexico Corrections Department, where he teaches writing and helps inmates navigate mental health and substance abuse issues. His poetry has appeared in the New England Review, the Laurel Review, and the Poem-a-Day series, published by the Academy of American Poets.

Cristina Rivera Garza

Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the novels The Iliac Crest and The Taiga Syndrome and the memoir Liliana’s Invincible Summer

Widely considered one of Mexico’s greatest writers, CRISTINA RIVERA GARZA examines the lives of the marginalized and oppressed—prison inmates, the mentally ill, immigrants—anyone who doesn’t neatly fit political or cultural norms. Her work is informed by the unsettling experiences of her own family, which relocated from Mexico to the United States and back again as the political landscape shifted. The New Yorker has called her characters “not so much people as exposed nerve endings, preternaturally responsive to the presence of others.” In her memoir Liliana’s Invincible Summer, Rivera Garza personalizes the increasing violence against women in Mexico by telling the story of her younger sister, Liliana, who was just twenty years old when she was murdered by her boyfriend. The book won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Rivera Garza won the 2018 Shirley Jackson Award for her novel The Taiga Syndrome and is currently a MacArthur Fellow. Her novel Death Takes Me was published in February 2025.

Jamie Figueroa

Critically acclaimed memoirist, novelist, and teacher

JAMIE FIGUEROA is the author of the 2024 memoir Mother Island, about growing up as a Puerto Rican in white rural Ohio. Kirkus Reviews called it “searching and lyrical … filled with nuance and depth.” She is also the author of the critically acclaimed 2021 novel Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer, which was a Good Morning America Must-Read Book of the Month and named one of the most anticipated debuts of the year by Bustle, Electric Literature, The Millions, and Rumpus. Figueroa has written for The New York Times, American Short Fiction, Elle, McSweeney’s, Emergence Magazine, Agni, and the Boston Review. She is a Bread Loaf and Truman Capote Scholar and teaches creative writing in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, in Santa Fe.

Elizabeth Jacobson

Former poet laureate of Santa Fe and author of award-winning collections including Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air

ELIZABETH JACOBSON is a former poet laureate of Santa Fe and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her 2019 collection Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air won the New Measure Poetry Prize and the New Mexico–Arizona Book Award. She is also the author of the collection Her Knees Pulled In and two poetry chapbooks, Are the Children Make Believe? and A Brown Stone. She is co-editor of the 2021 book Everything Feels Recent When You’re Far Away, a collection of art and poetry created by Santa Fe youth during the pandemic. Her new collection, There Are as Many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral, was published in January. Jacobson is a reviews editor for the online magazine Terrain and directs the poetry programs at Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts.

Julian Brave NoiseCat

Writer, filmmaker, and director of the Academy Award–nominated documentary Sugarcane

JULIAN BRAVE NOISECAT is a writer, filmmaker, and student of Salish art and history. His documentary film Sugarcane, directed with Emily Kassie, follows an investigation into the abuse and disappearance of children at an Indian residential school in British Columbia attended by members of NoiseCat’s own family. Sugarcane won the 2024 U.S. Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. NoiseCat has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and he won the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, which honors “excellence in long-form, narrative, or deep reporting on stories about underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in the present American landscape.” In 2021 he was named to the Time100 Next list, along with the starting point guard of his fantasy basketball team, Luka Dončić. NoiseCat’s first book, We Survived the Night, a reported memoir about contemporary Native American life, will be published in October.

William deBuys

Author, conservationist, and Pulitzer Prize finalist

WILLIAM DEBUYS is the author of River of Traps, an account of rural life in the mountains of New Mexico, co-written with Alex Harris. It was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and named a New York Times Notable Book of the year. His most recent book, The Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss, completes a trilogy that includes The Last Unicorn: A Search for One of Earth’s Rarest Creatures and A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest. With director Murat Eyuboglu, deBuys co-wrote the 2016 documentary The Colorado, about the history and ecology of the Colorado River. DeBuys has been a Kluge Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Lyndhurst Fellow. He lives and writes on the farm he has tended since 1976 in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Jill Momaday

Kiowa filmmaker, writer, and actor

JILL MOMADAY is an actor, writer, filmmaker, and native Santa Fean. Her 2017 film Return to Rainy Mountain chronicles a road trip she took with her father, the late Pulitzer Prize–winning author N. Scott Momaday, to visit sacred sites of the Kiowa people and the family’s homestead in Oklahoma. She is the director of the N. Scott Momaday Literary Trust and keeper of the Momaday family archives, and is currently working on a memoir and a short story collection.

Natachee Momaday Gray

Indigenous poet, performer, and musician

NATACHEE MOMADAY GRAY is a Santa Fe native and an Indigenous poet, performer, and musician. She comes from a long lineage of storytellers, including her Pulitzer Prize–winning grandfather, N. Scott Momaday. Her work focuses on the melding of art and myth, ancestry and nostalgia, food and prayer, frivolity and time. Her poem “Silver Box,” from her debut poetry collection, was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Momaday Gray has also won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Award. She lives on a small farm with her family in Coyote, New Mexico, and is currently working on a new poetry collection and a cookbook.

JJ Amaworo Wilson

Award-winning novelist, playwright, and essayist

JJ AMAWORO WILSON is a German-born Anglo-Nigerian-American writer. His 2016 novel Damnificados, loosely based on the real-life occupation of an abandoned skyscraper in Caracas, Venezuela, tells the story of the vagabonds and misfits of a dystopian society who set up their own community, complete with schools, shops, and a ragtag militia. The book won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction, the Independent Publisher Book Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the New Mexico–Arizona Book Award for Fiction. It was also named a top ten book in O, The Oprah Magazine. His second novel, Nazaré, won the 2021 Foreword INDIES Editor’s Choice Prize and the Independent Publisher Book Award. Wilson’s short stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, and his plays have been produced on four continents, most recently in Gaza. He is currently the writer-in-residence at Western New Mexico University, in Silver City.

Kathleen McCleery

Award-winning broadcast journalist

KATHLEEN McCLEERY is an award-winning broadcast journalist who has worked for NBC and PBS, where she served as deputy executive producer of the PBS News Hour. Since moving to New Mexico, she has reported and produced stories for that program on a wide variety of topics, including politics, the environment, education, science, health care, and the arts. McCleery taught journalism at her alma mater, Princeton University, in 2016 and 2018, focusing on media coverage of U.S. elections. As a student at Princeton, she was the first female news director of the local public radio affiliate, WPRB FM.

Cord Jefferson

Oscar- and Emmy-winning writer, director, producer, and journalist

CORD JEFFERSON worked for years as a journalist before an appearance on All In with Chris Hayes led him to a television writing career. He wrote for shows including Succession, Master of None, The Good Place, and the limited series Station Eleven and won an Emmy Award in 2020 for the HBO series Watchmen. He made his debut as a director with the 2023 film American Fiction, based on Percival Everett’s acclaimed novel Erasure. American Fiction was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and Jefferson won for his adapted screenplay. His first piece of fiction, a 2022 short story titled “The Front House,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In honor of his late mother, he founded the Susan M. Haas Fellowship, which helps unemployed and underemployed journalists break into television.

Maria Hinojosa

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and anchor and executive producer of Latino USA

MARIA HINOJOSA is the founder of Futuro Media, an independent, nonprofit newsroom creating multimedia content focused on the complexity of an increasingly diverse world. As the anchor and executive producer of the groundbreaking show Latino USA and as a contributor to MSNBC, she has informed millions of listeners about the changing cultural and political landscape in the United States and abroad. She was the first Latina reporter for NPR and has worked at PBS, CBS News, WNBC, CNN, and CBS Sunday Morning. In 2022 Hinojosa won a Pulitzer Prize for the Futuro Media podcast series Suave. She has also won four Emmys and dozens of other awards, including the Peabody and the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the author of four books, including the critically acclaimed memoir Once I Was You.

Alex Parsons

Award-winning novelist and teacher

ALEX PARSONS is a novelist and teacher who serves as the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, where he teaches a vibrant mix of MFA and PhD candidates. He has published two novels, In the Shadows of the Sun and Leaving Disneyland, and has received various writing and teaching awards, among them a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, and a Texas Fellowship in Literature, as well as the Ross M. Lence Awards in the Humanities and Teaching Excellence from the University of Houston. He earned advanced degrees at both the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and New Mexico State University.

Julia Goldberg

Veteran editor, reporter, and creative nonfiction instructor

Award-winning journalist JULIA GOLDBERG is the editor in chief of Source New Mexico, part of the largest state-focused nonprofit news organization in the United States. Goldberg’s work has appeared regionally and nationally in outlets such as the Santa Fe Reporter, where she served as editor for many years, The New York Times, and Salon. She has also been a full-time faculty member in the Creative Writing Department at Santa Fe University of Art and Design, where she designed the department’s journalism curriculum, and teaches periodically for Santa Fe Community College’s Creative Writing Program. Goldberg is the author of Inside Story: Everyone’s Guide to Reporting and Writing Creative Nonfiction. She is the former president of the New Mexico Fund for Public Interest Journalism and the former editorial chair for the national Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s board of directors.

Hakim Bellamy

Inaugural Albuquerque poet laureate and cultural activist

HAKIM BELLAMY has held the titles of inaugural poet laureate of Albuquerque (2012–2014), National Poetry Slam champion, and creative writing chair at New Mexico School for the Arts. His poetry has been published on the Albuquerque Convention Center, on the outside of a library, in inner-city buses, and in numerous anthologies. Bellamy has received the Career Achievement Award from the University of New Mexico’s Paul Bartlett Ré Peace Prize for his work as a community organizer and journalist, and in 2017 he was named a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow. He has served as the on-air television host for New Mexico PBS’s ¡Colores! program for three years, was deputy director of the City of Albuquerque Department of Arts and Culture from 2018 to 2022, and is the founding president of Beyond Poetry LLC. He is currently pursuing a law degree at the University of New Mexico School of Law.

Carmella Padilla

Journalist, author, and Santa Fe International Literary Festival co-founder

CARMELLA PADILLA is an award-winning journalist, author, and editor who explores intersections in art, culture, and history in the Southwest and beyond. Her books include A Red Like No Other: How Cochineal Colored the World, 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. Her next book, Printing the Spirit: Gustave Baumann’s Santos, a collaboration with printer Thomas Leech, will be published in May. Padilla is also at work on a memoir and a book about twentieth-century New Mexican furniture. A native Santa Fean, Padilla is a co-founder of the Santa Fe International Literary Festival and a recipient of the Santa Fe Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Jennifer Elise Foerster

Native American poet, writer, and teacher

JENNIFER ELISE FOERSTER is the author of three books of poetry, most recently The Maybe-Bird, and served as the associate editor of When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. She is the recipient of an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, was a Wallace Stegner Fellow, and holds a PhD in literary arts from the University of Denver. Foerster currently teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop and at the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program and is a visiting faculty member of the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin. A Mvskoke citizen, she lives in San Francisco.

Caity Weaver

Journalist, humorist, essayist

CAITY WEAVER works from Santa Fe as a staff writer for The Atlantic. She was previously a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and GQ. For her work, which focuses on contemporary American life and pop culture, she has reported on the tyranny of the penny and the mystery of glitter production, interviewed celebrities from Cher to the Rock, and embarked on an impossible mission to find Tom Cruise in the English countryside. The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, has called her “one of the most formidable nonfiction writers of her generation.”

2025 Festival Authors and Moderators

We’re proud to announce that the following writers will be part of the 2025 Santa Fe International Literary Festival. Check back for the full lineup soon!