By Estefanía Camacho

The writer Margaret Atwood (1939), widely recognized for her work in speculative fiction and for her dystopian novel turned into a film and television series, The Handmaid’s Tale, said she has never quite understood why Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, is making so much money. “You’re not ever going to live on Mars. I’m here to tell you,” the Canadian author said, prompting laughter during the closing keynote of the 21st San Miguel Writers’ Conference & Literary Festival.

Approximately 1,750 people attended the event, about 250 more than in 2025, enjoying four days of stimulating talks alongside morning yoga and writing sessions. From February 11 to 15, participants learned how to write memoir, poetry, short stories, crime fiction, and how to give voice to characters, guided by internationally renowned speakers such as Jennifer Clement, Elizabeth Santiago, Susan Brown, and Sandra Cisneros, the multi-award-winning recipient of the PEN America Literary Award. Sessions were held in tents spread across the grounds of the Hotel Real de Minas, a six-minute walk from the warm, radiant historic center of San Miguel de Allende.

Maira Kalman, Sandra Cisneros, and Yásnaya Aguilar
The acclaimed keynote lectures were among the most anticipated moments of the afternoon, with the conference opening on Wednesday, February 11, led by Abraham Verghese. At certain times, other roundtable discussions opened space for dialogue on a range of topics, with artificial intelligence emerging as a particularly popular theme.

On the second day, Maira Kalman (1949) spoke about her book Women Holding Things (2022). She explained how the project began during the pandemic. “What do women hold? The home and the family and the children and the food, the friendships, the work, the work of the world and the work of being human, the memories and the troubles and the sorrows and the triumphs and the love. Men do as well, but…” she recited emotionally. Kalman reflected on care, beauty, and the quiet persistence of daily work, arguing that in moments of collective anxiety, the most radical acts may simply be to keep working, notice beauty, and help those who need it.

Later that afternoon, Sandra Cisneros and Yásnaya Aguilar Gil, the Mixe writer from Oaxaca, led a close conversation in Spanish with a small group of attendees. Cisneros confessed how she thought she’d speak more with Mexicans since the first time she attended the festival, but realized it was mainly for English language speakers. “So we want these programs to include the Mexican community, to decolonize it, but we have to figure out a way for them to be free, truly free for the Mexican public,” she said, although this year some workshops were held in Spanish and offered to teenagers as well.

Yásnaya reflected on the panel’s theme of activism and literature, emphasizing that activism does not always look like constant resistance. Sometimes, she said, it looks like resting –and that does not mean abandoning the struggle. “When my community appointed me as a spokesperson in defense of water, I had my grandmother and many others who would have coffee and food waiting for me when I returned from assemblies. There is no such thing as heroic individual activism. It is sustained by the work of many.”

Cisneros also addressed the fact that right-wing religious groups have called for her book The House on Mango Street –now 42 years since its publication– to be removed from school programs. “They haven’t targeted my book specifically. It’s not that they chose only me,” she said, switching seamlessly between English and Spanish. “So I don’t take it personally. And I’m sure they haven’t read my book. The good thing is, they give me great publicity.”

Rebecca Kuang: A Call to Let Go of Nostalgia
As the afternoon progressed, excitement built for another highly anticipated keynote. The room erupted into thunderous applause as New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Kuang (1996), better known as R.F. Kuang took the stage. Young, with a soft, slightly high-pitched voice, she delivered a message in a tone so gentle it felt hypnotic.

Speaking about her novel Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution which draws parallels between a fantastic world and the reality of pursuing an academic degree. Kuang argued that one must break the illusion.

She went on to discuss the three myths that we cling to about the university: first, that academia is a pathway to upward socioeconomic mobility; second, that it is meritocratic; and third, that it is a site of free speech and political resistance. “I’ll argue all of these myths are false. They don’t describe any American university that exists. Indeed, they don’t even describe any university that existed in the past. We’re defending a nostalgic vision of that which never was.”

The audience listened, stunned, but engaged. With no guarantee that a college degree will lead to a well-paying job, she added, “These kids do not have the leisure to read Homer because they need that perfect transcript.” suggested Kuang and asked to extend more empathy toward students navigating precarity, including those who turn to AI out of desperation rather than laziness. The line earned vigorous applause.

Kuang did not leave the audience without answers. She proposed honoring forms of knowledge-sharing outside formal degree programs, just as much as we honor twelve sleepy undergrads. She praised adult learners as some of the best students and explained that she also offers a creative writing workshop for her community much like the one she teaches at Yale, with the costs partially contributing to a fund for children in Palestine. The audience rose in a standing ovation.

Day 3: Oral Tradition and the Written Word
The following day, Yásnaya Aguilar opened her lecture first in Mixe and then in Spanish, with interpretation provided for some attendees. She explained that literature is only one of the many possibilities encompassed by the poetic function of language. For her, it is not a problem that Mixe oral narratives are not validated as “literature,” since that label applies specifically to works produced within the Western tradition. “Mixe oral tradition narratives are not literature, and that’s not a bad thing. They are, however, a clear example of how the poetic function is exercised in this language.”
She emphasized that a community’s tradition of memory is collective, likening it to jazz. “While there is a shared structure, each performer of the memory tradition will execute it differently.”

That same afternoon, the lecture by Argentine writer Andrés Neuman (1977) felt like a direct dialogue with Yásnaya’s talk. With hints of stand-up comedy despite the seriousness of his ideas, Neuman demonstrated that the universal language of laughter requires no translation. He recalled how his grandmother kept to herself the fact that she used to be a translator from Yiddish into Spanish. Then he also spoke tenderly about documenting his child’s first words and early sentences. “We don’t remember, astonishingly, learning how to speak. And I suspect literature exists because of that gap. Poetry, in particular, exists as an attempt to remember that once we didn’t know how to speak, and we tried.”

Neuman also described his fascination with the life of María Moliner, the avant-garde librarian who single-handedly produced the most comprehensive dictionary of Spanish, which inspired his novel Until It Begins to Shine (2025).

That evening, three teenage writers were recognized among 70 students from Guanajuato who had attended workshops to write short stories. The moment deeply moved Neuman, who sees this kind of care as central to his idea of literature: caring for thought, and thinking about care. “That’s what festivals like this do,” he said.

Day 5: Margaret Atwood, Memory, and Times of Turmoil
The festival closed with Margaret Atwood, who reflected on memory, protest, and political instability following the publication of her 2025 memoir, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts. In a conversational keynote, Atwood revisited moments, repeating an interesting advice she provides in her book to “hang on to the megaphone” recounting how she once went for a walk with a friend then joined an anti–Vietnam War march. “We marched to the Boston Common, where the American Nazi Party took away our megaphone… So hang on to the megaphone. Don’t let them Nazis take it away from you.”

She also recalled a public event in Montreal where, during a Q&A session, someone asked whether The Handmaid’s Tale was autobiographical. “And I said, ‘No, it isn’t.’ And he said, ‘Yes it is.’ And I said, ‘No, it isn’t, it’s set in the future.’ And he said, ‘That’s no excuse.’ In a way, he was right, because anything you write goes through your head. Of course, the experiences you’ve had, the people you’ve met, the places you’ve lived: all of that comes in handy one way or another.”

Finally, and after questioning Musk’s wealth, despite acknowledging a time of turmoil and change that is not entirely under our control yet deeply affects us, Atwood expressed hope. She argued that while this may not be the worst moment in history, it does make us more aware of what we once took for granted, including a supposed Pax Americana, that seems to be crumbling. “We have to make it clear that this is not a problem of peoples; it’s a problem with an administration,” she said, touching her pacemaker to tell the audience to “Keep your nerve, and keep good relations wherever you can.”

Estefanía Camacho is a freelance Mexican journalist working across media and digital magazines. She is a specialist in gender, SMEs, economics, and business.

http://www.sanmiguelwritersconference.org