Padilla helped found the Crack Movement, along with fellow writers Eloy Urroz, Jorge Volpi, and Pedro Angel Palou, as a means for Mexican authors to find their own voice and write beyond magic realism.

[2] Padilla attended high school at Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa in Mbabane, Eswatini, and thereafter received his undergraduate education at the Universidad Iberoamericana where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies.

[3] In 1996, Padilla joined with longtime friends and fellow writers Jorge Volpi, Eloy Urroz, Pedro Ángel Palou García, and Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, who collectively presented a proposal based on their literary criticism and personal opinions of Mexican and Latin American literature.

This literary critique, a reaction to the Latin American Boom, became known as the Crack Manifesto and was presented as a means for Mexican authors to find their own voice, and write beyond Magic Realism.

"[5] In 2007, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa named Ignacio Padilla director of the José Vasconcelos National Library.