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

Sun Valley Writers’ Conference
  • 4.6 (31)
  • Performing Arts

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. Oct 6

    Theo Baker in Conversation with Vinson Cunningham: “How to Rule the World”

    As a freshman reporter for the Stanford student newspaper, Theo Baker received a tip. Most students would have let it go. But he didn't. What he discovered was a research misconduct scandal so significant that – by the time Theo had finished reporting and writing about it -- it forced the resignation of Stanford's president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a celebrated neuroscientist and biotech executive worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Theo was nineteen at the time – he’s only 21 now – and the quality and impact of his reporting led to him being awarded a Polk Award that year, making him the youngest person ever to receive one of journalism’s most prestigious awards. Theo’s memoir, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University, is both a wild, often darkly funny takedown of Stanford’s culture of tech primacy and a case study in what real investigative journalism requires: patience, skepticism, and the willingness to challenge people and institutions far more powerful than yourself. Joining him in conversation for this episode of Beyond the Page -- recorded live at the 2026 Writers Conference -- is Vinson Cunningham, staff writer and critic at The New Yorker as well as a gifted novelist, whose own sharp eye for institutions and the people who run them makes him the ideal person to draw out this story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  2. Sep 23

    MICHAEL POLLAN’S JOURNEY INTO CONSCIOUSNESS

    In this episode of Beyond the Page, Michael Pollan talks to Sun Valley Writers Conference Literary Director John Burnham Schwartz about his bestselling book A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness. For over three decades we have been the beneficiaries of Pollan’s indefatigable curiosity about everything from food and farming to mind-altering drugs. Now comes his provocative and personal look into consciousness itself and what makes us human. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  3. May 29

    Ruth Reichl – The Paris Novel

    RUTH REICHL, one of our best-known and most well-loved food writers, is the author of five memoirs, including Tender at the Bone and Save Me the Plums.  But she is also a captivating novelist, and, as you might imagine, her fiction is full of sensory pleasures.  In Reichl’s “The Paris Novel”, the protagonist Stella is left with an unusual inheritance from her mother:  a one-way plane ticket and a note reading simply, "Go to Paris."  But Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a traumatic childhood has confined her to the strict routines of her comfort zone.  In a conversation with fellow food writer ALEKSANDRA CRAPANZANO, recorded live at the 2025 Writers Conference, Reichl speaks about her novel that celebrates the city they both adore, and the many reasons for living deliciously, taking chances, and finding your true home.   Photo Credit - Shannon Greer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  4. Mar 6

    Dan Jones - WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES HAS DONE FOR THE MODERN WORLD

    Did you know that Edward III’s last parliament invented impeachment? That cancel culture in universities actually began at Oxford and in Paris in the 14th Century? That Edward II’s parties would have made Diddy’s freak-offs look like kindergarten parties by comparison? And then there’s the Magna Carta, which supposedly limited the power of the monarchy and established the principle that everyone, including the king, is subject to the law. In this episode – recorded live at the 2025 conference – bestselling British historian Dan Jones, author of such books as The Plantagenets, The Templars, and Henry V, and host of the podcast This Is History, brings us in riveting fashion into the weirdly prescient now of the Middle Ages. Photo credit: Ray J. Gadd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Dan Jones - WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES HAS DONE FOR THE MODERN WORLD

  5. Feb 12

    SALMAN RUSHDIE: WRITER IN THE WORLD

    In this episode, recorded live at the 2025 Conference, Salman Rushdie, having received the Sun Valley Writers' Conference Writer in the World Prize, talks with his fellow novelist and great friend Colum McCann. Rushdie is a writer who needs no introduction: his name has long been recognized around the world for his brilliant writing and his unfailing courage in defending freedom of speech. He was honored for his extraordinary body of work, both fiction and non-fiction – including his memoir Knife:Meditations after an Attempted Murder, his account of the attempt on his life in August of 2022 and how the love of his wife, the writer Rachel Eliza Griffiths, helped him to survive – and for continuing to write in the face of immeasurable opposition and danger. Salman Rushdie is many remarkable things, but above all, and always, he is a writer and a teller of stories, and a master at that.        *Photo Credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  6. Jan 17

    EVAN OSNOS: “The Haves and Have-Yachts”

    In this episode of Beyond the Page, recorded live at the 2025 Writers Conference, New Yorker staff writer and National Book Award-winning author Evan Osnos dives into the bold-faced, always entertaining, and all too timely topic of how much is too much in our society—or rather, how much is never enough? Such is the question for the billionaires who now make up America’s ultrarich. Their giant yachts, luxury compounds—and, oh yes, tax schemes—are a source of endless, if alarming, fascination. Osnos talks about his bestselling book The Haves and Have-Yachts and the acquisitive appetites and habits of our new “oligarchs” and how their outsized fortunes are allowing them to hold sway over the elections and the economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  7. 12/15/2025

    Doris Kearns Goodwin: “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s”

    BEYOND THE PAGE Doris Kearns Goodwin: “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s” In this episode – recorded live at the 2025 Writers Conference – Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s most acclaimed and beloved historians, chronicles her and her late husband Richard's experiences working with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson during the tumultuous 1960s, using personal archives to explore pivotal moments and their own relationship. Her bestselling book, “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s,” offers an intimate, up-close look at figures like JFK, LBJ, and RFK, weaving together their personal lives with major events like the Civil Rights Movement. But the heart of this wonderful, deeply moving memoir is unquestionably the enduring bond of mutual love and respect between husband and wife across the decades, a bond that embraces their differences as much as their similarities. “Dick was more interested in shaping history,” Doris has said, “and I in figuring out how history was shaped.” Photo credit – © 2024 AE Television Networks LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  8. 11/11/2025

    Ocean Vuong "The Emperor of Gladness"

    In this episode – recorded live at the 2025 Writers Conference – I have an intimate conversation, in front of 1500 people, with the novelist and poet Ocean Vuong. When he was two years old, in 1990, Ocean immigrated with his family from Vietnam. They settled in East Hartford, CT, seven relatives sharing a one-bedroom apartment. His mother worked at a nail salon. When Ocean learned to read at 11, he became the first literate member of his family. Then he became the first to attend college, eventually earning an MFA in writing from NYU. In 2016, he published his debut poetry collection, “Night Sky with Exit Wounds,” which drew immediate attention and acclaim. In 2019, his first autobiographical novel, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” written in the form of letters from a Vietnamese American son to his mother, became a bestseller and led to his being awarded a MacArthur Genius grant. By every outward sign, he had seemingly achieved the American Dream as a writer. Then his mother, who’d never been able to read his books, died of cancer. Another celebrated poetry collection, “Time is a Mother,” followed. And now we have Ocean’s magnificent second novel, “The Emperor of Gladness.” Photo credit – Tom Hines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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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