A library is a perfect place to hold a Writers Festival, especially when it is a spectacular local home for books and readers. In February, the renowned Rancho Mirage Writers Festival will welcome 60 authors and approximately 1,000 guests to gather from around the world to honor and celebrate the love of writing, reading, and literary dialogue. The Rancho Mirage Public Library and Observatory attracts an impressive array of thinkers and writers, and the festival has become a much anticipated annual event. The Coachella Valley – known to the world as a sunny place to retire, play golf, party, and recreate – also has a deep intellectual history, which will be on full display from Feb. 5 to 7.
The theme for the annual Rancho Mirage Writers Festival this year is “the United States Semiquincentennial.” The quarter-millennium on July 4, 2026, will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The esteemed list of writers for 2025 includes historians, journalists, academics, and pundits who might be familiar. The list includes Douglas Brinkley, Max Boot, Molly Jong-Fast, Frank Bruni, Jelani Cobb, Jon Meacham, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jesmyn Ward, activist David Hogg, cartoonist Roz Chast, travel writer Rick Steves, and Hua Hsu, associate professor of English at Vassar College and staff writer at The New Yorker. Hsu received the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography for his book “Stay True.”
Festival founder Jamie Kabler, among other pursuits, served in the White House Office of the Chief of Protocol for President Gerald R. Ford. Kabler envisioned bringing a premier intellectual event to the Coachella Valley and founded the festival in 2014. Often described as “Coachella for the brain,” the festival promises an incredible few days of deep dives, inspiration, listening, and discussion.
