This past weekend was the third annual Santa Fe International Literary Festival. As soon as I saw the line up of authors, some really big names, I knew I’d be going. But I didn’t plan to go to all the talks. When I bought my tickets months ago, I had planned to start with the 2:30 sessions so I could be out hiking in the mornings. And I’m glad I did! There’s no way I could have been inside all weekend with the gorgeous weather we had. But I’m also so glad I attended the sessions I did. The conversations between the authors and moderators (all successful writers on their own) were edifying and fulfilling in their scope that went far beyond the craft of writing. Here were my favorite parts of what each of the authors I saw had to say.
The thing that struck me most about listening to Jesmyn Ward speak is how real she. She didn’t have rehearsed answers, she often paused to think about what she wanted to say, she stumbled and backtracked at times. She was so relatable. In considering her manner of speaking, I wasn’t surprised when she talked about her public education in Mississippi schools, which consistently rank lowest in many measures. She said she her educational background made her feel insecure and inferior all through college, and she was essentially a wallflower in her classes. It wasn’t until grad school when she had professors who made an effort to pull her out of her shell and to let her know that her opinions and ideas matter that she gained confidence.
Ward teaches at Tulane and she said that’s the one thing she tries most to do – to make all her students feel like what they have to say is important. I’m so jealous of anyone who gets to be in her class. They have no idea how lucky they are to learn from such an accomplished writer.
Listening to her also gave me a little nostalgia for the five weeks I spent living just five miles down the road from her, driving over to DeLisle a few times hoping I might see her. Maybe we were driving next to each other on the I-10 at some point, or maybe she drove past me as I was running across the bridge from Pass Christian to Bay St Louis. Who knows, but it was nice to share some proximity with her once again.
Tommy Orange reminded us all that inspiration comes from the most unexpected places. As he was sitting in a warehouse signing thousands of copies of his book, he put on a Spotify playlist with the root song There, There by Radiohead. In case you didn’t know, that’s the title of his wildly successful debut novel, but the two are unrelated. The Spotify algorithm brought up a Portishead song, and a line from that song trigger something in his brain and he was off and running with the new novel. Just like that.
He also reminded us that the standard path isn’t always that one that works. He never wanted to go to an MFA program because those programs produce clones. There’s one acceptable way of writing literary fiction and it gets drummed into everyone’s heads and all the novels that come out of those programs are essentially the same. He did actually end of getting an MFA, but from the Institute of American Indian Arts, a place that felt more authentic for him. And if you’ve read There, There, you’ll realize it’s far from your standard MFA graduate novel. It’s a lot bolder and rawer in the themes it tackles and the plot points.
I have to point out though, that despite not getting a traditional MFA, he did use the traditional, cultivated, soft, careful MFA grad reading voice when reading an excerpt from his novel. A bit disappointing.
Doerr was the opposite of Ward; his speech was very polished, on point, witty, and confident. But he was also super personable and funny. He opened with a reading that highlighted a situation that all writers know well – the internal battle between getting the writing done and all the things in the house that are calling to you to get done. The dishes, the laundry, the sweeping. Chores suddenly seems urgent and appealing when you are staring at a blank page.
Doerr (who several other authors at the event referred to as Tony) made a lovely statement about how science and the humanities are two sides of the same coin. Both are interested in exploring what it is to be alive, what makes us who and what we are. Neither is more or less important that the other. I love this view of the humanities. He also said that just like science, literature should show how everything in the world is connected. It connects us to experiences, allowing us to “slip the trap” of our lives and experience others’ lives, learning how much we have in common the process. Enthusiasm bounced from his voice as he shared these thoughts, and he made it impossible not to think about how much I love books for this very reason.
And he tends to include both science and humanities in his writing, which you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read All the Light We Cannot See, the light being a reference to radio waves. I read that one, but not Cloud Cuckoo Land, which is about the importance of libraries and books. Discussing that book prompted another great comment from Doerr, that libraries matter more now than ever as the internet becomes “junkier and junkier”. There’s so much AI produced nonsense, and soon AI will be training off AI content and everything will eventually become drivel.
Julia Alvarez grew up on storytelling. Half-American, Half-Dominican, she grew up in the Dominican Republic during dictator Trujillo’s reign when intellectuals were frowned upon and oral storytelling was the norm. She didn’t like reading at school because it was all “dictator literature.”
When she read from her new book, The Cemetery of Untold Stories, there was no trace of the dull MFA voice. Her storytelling background came through loud and strong. She was a part of her work. And she really is. As the interviewer pointed out, Alvarez’s body of work follows her life. The themes and even the ages of the characters follow Alvarez as she grows older. She said that she “writes to understand”, so it makes sense that what is happening in her real world is reflected in her fiction. Her most recent two books feature women at the end of their lives. And she talked about how important she feels it is to pass the torch on to younger writers, to encourage them and share their voices.
Finally, Alvarez reflected Doerr’s sentiments that the main point of fiction is to allow you step into someone else’s shoes. Her latest book is dedicated to Anon, who she explained is all those people who make our world keep moving but who we never notice. It’s the voice of everyone, who fiction opens us up to and makes room in our hearts for. I have to agree – I feel like I’ve never understood people better in any other way than through well-written fiction. It’s why I can get so wrapped up in a book. Because none of it is really fiction. It’s all happened to someone out there at some point, and fiction lets you experience things along with all of the anonymous people.
Similar to Tommy Orange, Zamora talked about how writing in an academic environment is oppressive because you’re expected to buy into a certain tradition of writing. For him, that tradition does not apply to people from the global south. He’s from El Salvador. In Latin America and many other non-Western countries, writing is different. Writers are expected to bear witness to horrible things going on in their countries and offer solutions. For Zamora, writing is not the open exploration that is for Doerr and Alvarez. It’s a way to make a statement.
A statement that he was never allowed to make before he started writing. This was the most important part of his talk. Zamora’s memoir Solito is about his journey from El Salvador to the United States as a 9 year old boy with a group of strangers and a coyote. As you can imagine, it wasn’t easy and many awful things happened to him along the way. But when he reunited with his family in the USA, he wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone about it. He had to keep quiet and lie, lie, lie for the next ten years about anything that happened to him since he was in the country illegally. If he talked about it, he could risk his and his family’s situation and get sent back.
As someone so young and impressionable, he even started to believe the lies he told others about who he was and where he came from. He said that when he was filling out college applications, one of the questions was to describe the hardest thing he’d ever gone through and he wrote about losing a soccer game rather than traversing thousands of miles through the desert as a small child away from all his family.
Being forced to repress the trauma, coupled with growing up hearing the media (and from his own Hispanic classmates) how terrible illegal immigrants are and how they are less than and dangerous and unwanted really did a number on his self-esteem. It wasn’t until his twenties that he started getting therapy and started writing – both giving him the voice he lack for so long.
I think this message is important. So many people who endure hardships like his never get the chance to process it and just have to push on with the struggle. We could all be more empathetic.
Sides was the only real non-fiction writer whose talk I went to. He writes narrative history, but part of his talk was about how he arrived at the genre. He talked about starting with investigative reporting and writing for Outside Magazine, and generally how he “tried on” various types of writing before finding what worked for him.
His latest book, The Wide Wide Sea, took six years of research and he shared lots of interesting bits of information about the process. He talked about how Cook kept meticulous records but they were strictly factually, so finding information about his interior life and emotions was difficult. He got some of that information from the journals of the men on his ships, which have apparently hardly ever been used in previous literature. He also said that Cook’s records abruptly stopped as soon as they landed on Hawaii, which is so unusual that he’s convinced someone destroyed those journal pages for some reason. Also, Cook’s widow burned all their personal correspondence before her death, again making it nearly impossible for historians to glean anything about Cook the person, rather than Cook the navigator.
Sides also talked about the challenge of writing a book about a man who is being rebranded a villain in the modern era for participating in expanding the British Empire. He understands the modern disdain, but it was important to him to help people recognize the genius of Cook – that he never lost a ship, that his men never got scurvy, the incredible mapping he did of the Pacific. Historical figures can simultaneously be protagonists and antagonists and we shouldn’t throw them out completely.
Finally, what I found interesting in his talk is when he discussed that unlike fiction where multiple people can write about the same thing at the same time, this is not the case with non-fiction. For example, Jesmyn Ward almost didn’t write her most recent novel, Let Us Descend, because Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad was such a success. But there were million of enslaved people. Telling the story of one still leaves room for so many more. Not so with non-fiction. Sides has had two instances in his writing life where he was working on a book about a major historical event and it turned out someone else was writing on the exact same topic. In one instance, he had to throw out four months of research and abandon the idea, but in the other, the other author gave way to let Sides write the book.
Anne Lamott was the closing speaker. She has a long, successful writing career but I really only know her from Bird by Bird, a book on the craft of writing that just about every writing teacher ever has recommended. I read it many years ago, but listening to her speak prompted me to request it from the library and give it a re-read. Her newest book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love, doesn’t sound like a book that would interest me and I had to laugh out loud at her own description of writing this book. She herself thought, oh god, seriously, I’m writing a book on love? Ugh! She was sure the New York City critics would tear her apart, but then she decided she’s 70 and doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks. Fantastic!
Honestly, I don’t have much to share about her talk but I have to say that I could have listened to her talk forever. She told some lovely stories from her personal life – with her son and her partner. She told each story with so much emotion; she pulled me into every word. It was like sitting down with a good friend chatting about life. She seems like the most wonderful person.
Besides the speakers, there was a reception from 5-6 each of the three nights with free wine and beer and live music. That was really nice, though the courtyard in the convention center really isn’t large enough to accommodate a group the size of the festival. My other complaint is that they needed more food options. There was only one food truck that left early on Saturday, a coffee cart with some dry pastries, and no food at the reception, though many people like me had been there for hours and would be there through dinner hour. And if you’ve been around the Santa Fe Plaza area, you know there’s absolutely nowhere for grab-and-go options in the half hour between sessions.
So am I going back next year? Even though I ended the weekend feeling “lifted” intellectually and emotionally (the title of this post is one of the slogans of the festival), probably not. An initial list of confirmed authors is already available but there’s no one on the list I’m dying to see. Michael Pollen is the only one so far that I’d be interested in. Michael Cunningham is interesting, but I saw him speak in Albuquerque just a few months ago. Neil Gaiman is obviously a massive draw, but I’m not really a fan of his work. So, it’ll depend on what additional authors are announced, but for now, I’ll enjoy the bits of wisdom this past weekend gave me for some time to come.
Jennifer A Swallow 