Beyond the Page: The Best of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference

Sun Valley Writers’ Conference
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Beyond the Page: The Best of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference

Welcome to Beyond the Page: The Best of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. Over the past 25 years, SVWC has become the gold standard of American literary festivals, bringing together contemporary writing's brightest stars for their view of the world through a literary lens. Every month, Beyond the Page will curate and distill the best talks from the past quarter century at the Writers’ Conference, giving you a front row seat on the kind of knowledge, inspiration, laughter, and meaning that Sun Valley has come to be known for.

  1. 4 DAYS AGO

    Kristin Hannah in conversation with Jenny Emery Davidson

    In this episode, recorded live at the 2024 Sun Valley Writers' Conference, novelist Kristin Hannah talks to Jenny Emery Davidson, the executive director of The Community Library in Ketchum, Idaho, about her #1 New York Times bestselling novel The Women. In The Women, Hannah (known for previous bestselling historical novels such as The Nightingale, The Great Alone, and The Four Winds) takes up the Vietnam epic and re- centers the story on the experience of the military nurses who worked under fire, on bases and in field hospitals throughout the war, but whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has all too often been forgotten. Like so many male soldiers of the time, Frankie McGrath, the novel’s heroine, finds herself overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed and politically divided America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    29 min

  2. DEC 2

    Ancient Wisdom and the Enduring Power of Community

    In a time of loneliness and isolation, social rupture and alienation, what will it take to mend our broken hearts and rebuild our society? In this episode, one of Ameriica’s leading rabbis, and the author of the book The Amen Effect, Sharon Brous makes the case that it is through honoring our most basic human instinct – the yearning for real connection – that we reawaken our shared humanity and begin to heal. In a conversation with legendary bookseller Mitchell Kaplan recorded live at the 2024 Writers Conference, Brous pairs heart-driven anecdotes from her experience building and pastoring to a leading-edge faith community over the past two decades with ancient Jewish wisdom and contemporary science. Hers is a clarion call: the sense of belonging engendered by our genuine presence is not only a social and biological need, but a moral and spiritual necessity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    42 min

  3. OCT 7

    Putin, Ukraine, and the Future of Russia

    The author of a seminal book on Putin, All The Kremlin’s Men, and the founding editor-in-chief of what was Russia’s most truth-telling opposition news channel TV Rain, Mikhail Zygar is a journalistic hero to many in Russia. Now living and writing in the U.S. after fleeing persecution by Putin, Zygar continues to cover the most troubling stories of his homeland with unmitigated courage and a razor-sharp intelligence. In this episode, recorded live at the 2024 conference, he sits down with The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to discuss his most recent book, War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, and the state of all things Putin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    34 min

  4. JUL 16

    Patrick Radden Keefe

    In this episode, recorded live at the 2023 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference, New Yorker Staff Writer Patrick Radden Keefe, who has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award to the Orwell Prize to the National Book Critics Circle Award for his meticulously reported, hypnotically engaging work on the many ways people behave badly, tells a few stories and lifts the hood on what he calls his “abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    24 min

  5. MAY 17

    Curtis Sittenfeld

    In bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld’s much-loved new novel, she explores—with her typically keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page—the neurosis-inducing and heart-fluttering wonder of love,while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age. Sittenfeld sits down with SVWC Literary Director John Burnham Schwartz—a former professor of hers at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop—to discuss what makes Romantic Comedy a romantic comedy, her approach to genre and craft in previous novels such as American Wife, Rodham, and Eligible, and other stories from her literary journey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    20 min

  6. FEB 24

    Javier Zamora in conversation with Mitchell Kaplan

    In this episode of Beyond the Page, recorded live at the 2023 conference, poet and memoirist Javier Zamora talks to legendary bookseller Mitchell Kaplan about his memoir Solito, which chronicles his experiences traveling from El Salvador to the United States, by himself, when he was 9 years old. Javier Zamora writes, and speaks, like someone who believes he can never afford to forget that journey, or the experience on the other side, in America, of growing up undocumented. You won’t be able to forget, either. And that is the power of great literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    22 min

  7. JAN 18

    Swamp Story: Dave Barry's Florida

    Recorded at the closing of the 2023 Sun Valley Writers' Conference, Pulitzer Prize-winning humor writer (and one of the funniest people alive) Dave Barry talks about his latest novel Swamp Story, using it mainly as a springboard to talk about his crazy home state of Florida, and from there, about some of the problems facing our nation in general, and what he would do to fix them if by chance he ever gets the authority to do so – which, Dave says, we should all pray he never does. And finally, Dave assures us that the one promise he can make is that nobody will come away from this talk with any useful information whatsoever. Here’s Dave Barry, closing the 2023 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    35 min

  8. 12/15/2023

    Andrea Elliott in conversation with Ayad Akhtar

    Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Andrea Elliot sits down with another Pulitzer winner, novelist and playwright Ayad Akhtar, at the 2023 Writers’ Conference to talk about Elliot’s book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. The subject of the book is a Black girl in New York City named Dasani, whose story – told through the lens of almost a decade of Elliot’s deep reporting – brings to vivid and devastating life the realities of how poverty and race and the moral failings of our institutions impact the most marginal among us.  Elliott tells us about Dasani's life and how it is both singular and emblematic, and she talks about her own passions for the deeply immersive journalism that is the hallmark of her professional life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    42 min
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4.7
out of 5
26 Ratings

About

Welcome to Beyond the Page: The Best of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. Over the past 25 years, SVWC has become the gold standard of American literary festivals, bringing together contemporary writing's brightest stars for their view of the world through a literary lens. Every month, Beyond the Page will curate and distill the best talks from the past quarter century at the Writers’ Conference, giving you a front row seat on the kind of knowledge, inspiration, laughter, and meaning that Sun Valley has come to be known for.

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