BY KAREN BOSSICK

The Sun Valley Writers Conference will offer members of the community a chance to hear New York Times columnist David Brooks free on the Sun Valley Pavilion lawn.

Brooks, who recently wrote that the country is “dependent on a child,” in an article about President Trump, will speak at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, July 1, on “The Soul of America” at the Sun Valley Pavilion.

The Writers Conference will also offer a free reading and question-and-answer session by novelist Imbolo Mbue at Ketchum’s Community Library at 5 p.m. Thursday, June 29.

Mbue’s novel, “Behold the Dreamers,” tells the story of a young Cameroonian couple trying to make a new life in New York just as the Great Recession upends the economy.

Finally, the Writers Conference will offer a free opportunity to hear Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar discuss “Muslims in America: A Playwright’s Compendium of Characters” at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, July 2, on the Sun Valley Pavilion Lawn.

Akhtar, a Pakistani-American playwright, is best known for his 2012 play Disgraced,” which is centered around a dinner party that becomes a powder keg over racial and ethnic prejudices, including Islamophobia.

He played a would-be terrorist in the 2005 film about “The War Within,” which recounts the story about an ordinary man radicalized into becoming a terrorist. And in 2011 he played Neel Kashkari in the HBO film “Too Big to Fail.”

Tickets for Brooks and Akhtar are free but must be reserved in advance at www.svwc.com.

The Sun Valley Writers Conference will be held June 30 through July 3 in Sun Valley. Tickets for individual speakers in the Pavilion go online beginning today—May 31—at www.svwc.com.