San Miguel Writer’s Conference 2025

Hola!

I am delighted to be joining The 20th Annual San Miguel Writers’ Conference and Literary Festival, February 12–16, 2025, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico!! I hope you will consider attending!

I applied for a faculty position because I love learning about craft, engaging with the wider writing community, and travelling, and I wanted to challenge myself. I am thrilled to be leading two nonfiction workshops.

The first is called “The Personal Essay as Resistance.” Lately, I’ve been working in personal essay because I find it is the best way to explore and articulate how I feel about issues that get under my skin. I have some ideas to share on why this form is so important, challenging, and exciting to write.

Description: Writing a personal or narrative essay is, by its very nature, an intimate and defiant act. Writers reveal something deeply significant about their lives or something they witnessed, and how it changed them in some way. These stories captivate readers because they are compelling, painful, funny, interesting, or thought-provoking and have the power to shift, enlighten, or evolve the reader’s thinking by offering new perspectives. The personal essay is a way to be seen and to see the world in a new way. It’s a way to bravely resist and document that resistance.

There is so much injustice in the world, and it is the storytellers who will shape the narrative of history. Publishers of both news and literary publications are increasingly interested in the personal essay as a vital form of content that offers both political and artistic possibilities to better frame today’s devastating events. In this workshop, we’ll explore how to integrate contemporary issues with craft to reach readers via an intimate lens. In an era of mistrust and disinformation, the personal essay can break through the noise as a meaningful form of truth to power.

The second workshop is called “Writing the Blank Spaces: Hybrid Forms and Autofiction in Memoir.” This one will reflect on what I learned by writing Holden After and Before. There was a lot to struggle with, including structure, voice, and even the inner conflict of writing about my son, who couldn’t speak for himself. Many writers find themselves in the same position and it does not feel great.

Description: When Tara McGuire’s son Holden died of an overdose, she felt compelled to write about the effect his death had on her—even though she didn’t know what had happened. These “blank spaces” often block writers from engaging with and completing personal narratives in which some facts are missing. More and more, writers are breaking through the confines of genre to create more meaningful, creative, and indeed, “truer” works that defy categorization.

This workshop will explore how to develop plot lines and shape scenes we have never witnessed. We’ll learn craft devices to help navigate uncertainty and the ethical responsibility of personal stories—for example, autofiction or what McGuire calls “informed fiction,” which is commonly used, and the “chain of responsibility,” where writers can intentionally hybridize plot to include fiction. We’ll break down limiting beliefs, calm nerves, invigorate our memoir’s momentum, and be set free.

The SMWC has lined up a star-studded roster of keynote speakers. Registration is an à la carte situation. I’ll leave a link at the bottom of this post so you can browse.

The headliner is John Irving, the bestselling author of The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules. Irving’s first book in seven years, The Last Chairlift, published two years ago, is 900 pages! Irving calls it “part ghost story, part love story, spanning eight decades of sexual politics.” Also, props for now living in Toronto, John!

I’m really looking forward to hearing from Percival Everett, the American writer and distinguished professor of English at the University of Southern California. The recent hit movie “American Fiction,” which I freaking loved for many reasons but especially the book award jury scene, is based on his novel “Erasure.” Everett will no doubt have a thing or two to say about the publishing industry. Everett has been nominated for the Booker Prize twice — shortlisted for “The Trees” (2022) and longlisted for “James” this year. Everett is the author of over 30 published works, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The elegant and eloquent John Vaillant is also one of the keynote speakers. We both attended the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Literary Arts last summer, and his talk about the petroleum industry’s connection to climate disaster left me reeling. His book “The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival” was a bestseller translated into 16 languages. In 2015 he published “The Jaguar’s Children,” a novel about an undocumented Mexican immigrant trapped inside an empty water truck that has been abandoned in the desert by human smugglers. The Golden Spruce won the GG and The Writer’s Trust Nonfiction Prize, among others. Then, in 2023, he published “Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast,” about the devastating 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire. The list of awards and accolades for his latest book would take up an entire page! What a treat to hear him speak again. Maybe we can share a margarita, too!

Foodie alert!! Ruth Reichl is in the house. Reichl is the New York Times bestselling author of five memoirs, including “Tender at the Bone,” which my book club read and LOVED; the novels “Delicious!” and “The Paris Novel; and the cookbook “My Kitchen Year.” She was editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine and was the restaurant critic for both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times.

Jennifer Clement is an American-Mexican author whose works include “Gun Love”, “Prayers for the Stolen”, and “Widow Basquiat,” a memoir about artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s relationship with his muse, Suzanne Mallouk — told from Mallouk’s perspective. She has published several collections of poetry and is the first woman president of PEN International. Clement has strong local ties as a popular speaker and as the co-director and founder of the San Miguel Poetry Week (with her sister Barbara Sibley).

Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian-American poet and scholar. He is the author of “Calling a Wolf a Wolf,” the chapbook, “Portrait of the Alcoholic,” and the novel “Martyr!” a New York Times bestseller and finalist for the 2024 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. He was a Guggenheim scholar and is the director of the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of Iowa.

Jorge F. Hernández is a prolific novelist, editor, translator, essayist, and historian. He is the author of “La Emperatriz de Lavapiés,” “Réquiem para un ángel.” He was born in Mexico City in 1962, and spent his childhood in Germany, later moving to Washington, D.C.

The five day festival has two distinct elements — the keynote speaker series and the actual writers’ conference which is absolutely crammed with workshops for writers of all levels, interests, and budgets.

You will definitely find me at the Mexican Fiesta, receptions, and dinners. You can also register for one-on-one pitch sessions with literary agents, individual consultations with industry experts, faculty readings, open mic sessions, guided local excursions, discussion groups, yoga, massage etc…

If you just want to hang out and explore San Miguel de Allende, there is so much to see! San Miguel de Allende is filled with artist studios and ateliers and has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site! We’ve been advised to bring flat shoes to wander the cobblestone streets.

The festival is offering its “Early Bard” 10 percent discount on tickets and packages purchased by August 31. Find out more about the program, keynote speakers, and faculty by visiting the literary festival website. Let me know if you have any questions.

Follow the San Miguel Writers’ Conference:
Facebook.com/SMWritersconference/
Instagram: @sanmiguelwritersconference
YouTube: @sanmiguelliterarysalaa.c.9386