The Santa Fe International Literary Festival is back May 16-18, 2025 and looks set to be a sold-out weekend featuring some of the world’s finest voices in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. If you haven’t book your tickets yet, now is the time. Here are several of our top picks as well as their time-slots.
Authors at the 2025 Santa Fe International Literary Festival
Roshi Joan Halifax and Henry Shukman
Saturday and Sunday, May 17 and 18, 8:00 a.m.
Start your Saturday and Sunday off blissfully with Morning Meditation with Roshi Joan Halifax (Saturday) and Henry Shukman (Sunday). Halifax is a Buddhist teacher and social and environmental activist while Shukman is a Zen master, poet, and award-winning author of the memoir One Blade of Grass.
Gabrielle Zevin
Sunday, May 18, 9:15 a.m.
Novelist, screenwriter, and author of the brilliant hit book, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Gabrielle Zevin, is onstage with Hakim Bellamy, the inaugural poet laureate of Albuquerque. The New York Times also called her latest book, ‘…a love letter to the literary gamer.’
Marie Arana and Cristina Rivera Garza
Saturday, May 17, 1:00 p.m. and Sunday, May 18, 2:30 p.m.
A definite ‘don’t miss’ is Maria Hinojosa, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and anchor and executive producer of Latino USA, in conversation with Marie Arana, author of LatinoLand on Saturday. Hinojosa will also be in conversation with Cristina Rivera Garza, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the novel The Iliac Crest, The Taiga Syndrome, and the memoir Liliana’s Invincible Summer on Sunday.
Narrative 4 Students Showcase and More
Friday, May 16, afternoon.
For the younger aspiring writer, there are loads of activities including The Narrative 4 Students Showcase which shines the spotlight on student-created visual art, writing, and multi-media storytelling that looks at life in Santa Fe from a youth perspective, while exploring themes of empathy, identity, and connection.
And if you can’t wait for the Festival, then SFILF and Violet Crown are hosting a film series that brings big books to the big screen. Grab some popcorn and get comfortable for film adaptations of books such as The Hours, The Joy Luck Club, and Gone Girl. An extra film has been added with American Fiction which will show on Thursday May 15, the day before filmmaker Cord Jefferson is on the stage with Percival Everett, author of Erasure, on which American Fiction is based.
Story by Julia Platt Leonard
Photo Courtesy of Santa Fe International Literary Festival
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