Everything living, human or otherwise, must adapt or perish. On Thursday, December 14, come hear four remarkable writers—Sandra Gulland, Janet McAdams, Brandel France de Bravo, and Ellen Sharp—give us fresh perspectives on floods, daughters (royal and otherwise), fishing, and butterfly sanctuaries.

Sandra Gulland writes biographical historical fiction and is the author of six published novels: the Josephine B. Trilogy about Napoleon’s wife Josephine, two novels set in the French court of the Sun King, and a Young Adult novel about Josephine Bonaparte’s daughter Hortense. She’s now writing another Young Adult novel, this one about fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Tudor who became Queen Elizabeth I. She lives half the year in rural Ontario and the other half in San Miguel de Allende.

Janet McAdams is a writer, editor, and translator. Her first book, The Island of Lost Luggage, received an American Book Award. Her other poetry collections include Feral, the chapbook Seven Boxes for the Country After, and Buffalo in Six Directions / Búfalo en seis direciones, a bilingual edition of her new and selected poems, recently published in Mexico City and Patagonia.
Brandel France de Bravo is the author of the forthcoming book of poems, Locomotive Cathedral (Backwaters Press, University of Nebraska, March 2025), Provenance, and the chapbook Mother, Loose. Her poems and essays have appeared in 32 Poems, Barrow Street,Conduit, The Georgia Review, Seneca Review, Southern Humanities Review and elsewhere. She teaches a meditation program developed at Stanford University called Compassion Cultivation Training.©

Ellen Sharp is a psychedelic integration coach based in San Miguel de Allende. Prior to moving to San Miguel, she spent a decade working in monarch butterfly ecotourism and conservation in the Cerro Pelón Sanctuary in the State of Mexico. Her memoir in progress, Fragile Messengers, reflects on this challenging experience. Originally from South Carolina, Sharp earned a BA from Brown University and holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from UCLA. Links to her writing can be found on ellensharp.com.

Poetry & Prose Café presents local and visiting writers, establishedand emerging, on the second Thursdays of the month, from October through March. Books written by the presenters will be available for purchase at our no-commission pop-up Café Bookshop. Admission is free but donations (100 pesos per person) are strongly encouraged due to the sound and venue costs of producing these events.

The reading begins promptly at 5PM. Please arrive early to give yourself time to buy a drink and find a seat.