SAN MIGUEL
Writers' Conference & Literary Festival
Festival de Escritores y Literatura
FEBRUARY 12–16, 2020
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Announcing the 2020 Keynote Speakers for the 15th Annual Conference
by Susan Page
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The Writers’ Conference is excited to reveal the keynote speakers for our February 2020 event. Registration for the 15th Annual Writers’ Conference and Literary Festival is now open. The dates are February 12 to 16, 2020.
For our “coming of age” 15th Anniversary Conference, we will present two authors whose debut novels created an international sensation.
Delia Owens
’s first novel is the breathtaking,
Where the Crawdads Sing
. At this writing, it is enjoying its 44th week on the
New York Times
bestseller list, most of those weeks at #1. And we are thrilled to be able to present
Tommy Orange
, author of the stunning novel
There, There
, about the complex lives of twelve “urban Indians” in Oakland, California, all of whom are preparing to participant in an annual Indian Powwow. The
New York Times
said of this novel, “Yes, it really is that good!”
And speaking of coming of age, the National Book Foundation named multi-award-winning
Valeria Luiselli
as one of “five under thirty-five” most accomplished authors. She was the subject of a major feature article in
Vanity Fair
, where they said that her novel,
Lost Children Archive
“ . . . is a Great American novel for our time, a dense and layered novel of the Americas . . . relevant to today’s issues of immigration and family.” Luiselli will speak to us about, “Migrant Stories in the American Border Crisis.” Among her many other travels and activities, she served as an interpreter for young Central American migrants seeking legal status in the United States.
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Our poet this year could not be a better fit for our Conference and is excited about being with us.
Juan Felipe Herrera
was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. Not only a poet, he is a performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. He is the recipient of more than twenty distinguished awards including the National Book Critics Circle award for poetry and. L.A. Times Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement, and is the author of twenty-one books including collections of poetry, prose, short stories, and young adult novels.
We have long hoped to be able to present one of Mexico’s best-known and best-loved novelists and teachers,
Rosa Beltran
, and 2020 is our year! Rosa is a novelist and a distinguished professor of literature at UNAM, “the Harvard of Mexico.
From Canada, we are featuring
Madeleine Thien
, who has won every prestigious literary award Canada offers, including the Governor General’s award and the Giller Prize. She was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and for Berlin’s International Literature Prize. Her highly prized novel,
Do Not Say We Have Nothing
, spans the length of China’s modern history from Mao’s revolution in 1949 to the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s to Tiananmen Square in 1989.
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Our star lineup of internationally acclaimed writers is only the beginning of the electrifying week we are planning. Two new additions, both open to the public by individual ticket, will be a lavish, over-the-top
quinceañera
fiesta including especially fun surprises, and a Publication Celebration for the anthology we are publishing, entitled
15: A Celebration of Fifteen Years of Literary Excellence from the San Miguel Writers’ Conference
.
The anthology, with both English and Spanish sections, contains contributions from Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Juan Villoro, Calvin Trillin, Jorge Volpe, and a long list of other previous keynote speakers.
The five days will include the hilariously entertaining
Literary Death Match
, which was a highlight of our last Conference and had all those who attended trying to recapture the fun for all their friends. The much-beloved Canadian literary talk show host, Hal Wake, will be with us again to conduct his deft interviews with several of the keynoters.
Our extraordinary faculty of over forty skilled teachers, arriving from all over the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, will conduct our internationally acclaimed 90-minute, three-hour, and five-day writing skills workshops. Our “The Pleasures of Reading” package, designed for you if you love to read, includes sessions on the poets Pablo Neruda and Garcia Lorca as will as a workshop entitled, “Writing Across Cultures.”
The host hotel for the Conference, the Real de Minas, is offering greatly
reduced room rates
at both the Conference Hotel and the beautiful Santuario Boutique Hotel
until September 30
.
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For full information and to register or purchase tickets, visit:
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