What does it take for a writer to pour his soul out onto the pages of a book? To dilute the blood and its fluids into the ink? To fill that empty page with his deepest secrets?

If someone had the concrete answer to these questions, it would surely be a formula that could be emulated and transmitted from generation to generation, but that is not the case. 

However, not all is lost and there are movements and conferences that are capable of giving you the push you need as a writer to find your own path. This is how the Festival of Writers and Literature returns for its eighteenth edition to San Miguel de Allende with speakers who make Hemingway himself want to rise from the grave. 

The same Writer's Conference that gave San Miguel the masterful talk by JK Rowling and authors like Delia Owens with her “Wild Girl” that would go on to become an HBO series directed by Reese Witherspoon as excitedly described by Fer Tovar, the cultural ambassador who, alongside the magnanimous Tina Bouche, supports the volunteer area. 

The same area is dedicated to discovering young authors and encouraging them on their path to publishing their first novel and subsequently being able to return to the Conference, no longer as volunteers but as speakers on their own merit in this circular cycle where the reader becomes the writer.  

The series of conferences, talks, workshops and masterclasses will take place at the Hotel Real de Minas from February 13-17 in 4 intensive days where literary creativity will be the order of the day. 

Speakers include NY Times bestselling author Janelle Brown with his talk about “Characters and their Defects” where you will learn to modify those vices that nobody likes to turn them into a characteristic that makes your character someone endearing even if their actions and feelings are not the most conventional. 

Representing inclusive literature arrives Brenda Lozano who from her position provides the valuable gender perspective that we so need in literary creation.

To understand the narrative of non-fiction, Benjamin Llor He becomes a method actor and delves into the reality of what he is trying to express, turning himself into a character in his own story, generating radical empathy.

Linda Spalding He doesn't mess around when it comes to exploring his roots. Although sometimes we would like to think that we come from good people, the reality is that diving into your family's past could bring you unexpected discoveries and how you deal with that in the present to sublimate it into art, speaks volumes about your identity as an author.

Not a single English word was in the vocabulary of Jean Kwok when she emigrated to the United States from Hong Kong. Her odyssey would be immense until she entered Harvard, where she would propel herself to become a multi-award-winning author based on the theme of her origins.

As for the masterclasses that we will have in San Miguel, there is one specialized in poetry, another in autobiographical narrative and the third in the code for writing fiction.

If this intensive writers' camp is not enough, we leave the most interactive part for the grand finale: the workshops.

Workshops that will teach you how to overcome writer's block, how to write powerful dialogues between memorable characters, the art of turning your travels into something worth reading, and techniques to get a literary agent.

All this through fun literary exercises where you will use the city of San Miguel not as a location but as another character in the story that is about to be born from your imagination. 

Whether you are a new writer or an established one, it never hurts to polish your writing tools and meet people in the field that can cause so much satisfaction, ecstasy and agony to the reader.

Check out the program and see the workshops this festival has for you here.