Santa Fe Literary Festival looks to bring readers, writers together
May 21—The writers — a long lineup of talent — have an allure.
But the inaugural Santa Fe Literary Festival isn't just about the writers.
The three-day event, spotlighting a combination of local and world-renowned authors, also is about "getting us, the readers, to be able to interact, to meet each other — you know, reacquaint ourselves with old friends, meet new people, discuss, debate, do all of those good things," organizer Julia Platt said.
Platt, a food writer, is one of three friends who organized what the group hopes will be the first of many book-focused fests in the City Different.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner and New York Times bestselling author Colson Whitehead opened the festival Friday night at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center.
He read from his most recent novel, Harlem Shuffle, before sitting down for a discussion with Sherri Burr — a Pulitzer Prize nominee and former professor at the University of New Mexico who retired to write full time — about the complex dynamics of race and slavery in his books.
The two discussed Whitehead's tendency to merge fact with fiction to open up conversations about how Black people have been treated in America.
"If I stuck to a realistic novel, I couldn't talk about America taken to its terrible extremes, like the attitudes, the manipulation of Black bodies under medical experimentation, the enforced sterilization in the late 19th century," Whitehead said.
Thousands of book lovers from around the nation are expected to converge at the convention center this weekend to hear from array of an authors, including Margaret Atwood, John Grisham, Joy Harjo, Sandra Cisneros and Santa Fe resident George R.R. Martin — to name just a few.
"They said they're gonna do a literary festival. I said, 'Oh, great, we could use one of those,' " said bestselling fantasy author Martin said when asked to comment on the event Friday.
Martin, who owns the Jean Cocteau Cinema in downtown Santa Fe and perhaps is best known for his Song of Ice and Fire book series that inspired the HBO TV series Game of Thrones, will take part in a Sunday morning discussion on writing.
The festival organizers — Platt, publicist Clare Hertel and editor and publisher Mark Bryant — share a love of literature and wanted to share it with others.
"Santa Fe was such a such a perfect place for a festival like this," Bryant said Friday. "It has this great literary tradition that goes back centuries, beginning with the oral traditions of Indigenous and Hispano people. And you have all the writers that either grew up here or moved here and became famous."
The festival has brought in literary leaders from a wide variety of genres, from fantasy and science fiction to nonfiction to poetry to food writing.
It also is inviting local youth poets and writers to showcase their work on the community stage Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Platt said the group's goal was to create a weekend of lively and thought-provoking conversations.
"You know, we've been deprived of this due to COVID for so long," she said.
Planning for the festival started roughly three years ago, before the pandemic paused all in-person events in early 2020, organizers said.
During an opening reception Friday evening, attendees got a chance to sip wine while mingling with some of their favorite writers.
"It's wonderful to have this in Santa Fe. We're here because we love to read," festivalgoer Lora Chock said.
She and her sister, Julia Rhodes, said they planned to listen to talks by Atwood and Grisham.
