STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
The Sun Valley Writers’ Conference is offering a host of options for free public participation during its July 17-20 conference.
The Conference will livestream 15 live talks, including those of George Packer, Isabel Allende, Daniel James Brown and actor John Lithgow, from the Sun Valley Pavilion to the Pavilion lawn big screen.
Many of the talks this year focus on the trauma of the past year as it relates to COVID, racial strife and the rancor America has experienced.
Free public seating will be available in pods of up to eight people on a first-come, first-served basis beginning each day at 9 a.m. Attendees are asked not to try to stake out their place with low-back chairs or blankets before 9 a.m.—those items will be taken to the Lost and Found.
Masks will not be required during the talks. But attendees are reminded to bring water and wear hats to shade themselves as the meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Pocatello is predicting continued warm weather. Attendees are also asked to leave pets at home as space is limited.
Those occupying the Pavilion lawn will be welcome to browse in the Bookstore Tent and take part in book signings; masks will be required in the Bookstore Tent.
Additionally, for the first time ever, attendees can join the conference from around the world, with live streaming of all Pavilion talks online through the SVWC YouTube channel. Talk recordings will also be available to watch after the conference at https://svwc.com.
THE LINEUP:
SATURDAY, JULY 17
9:30 a.m. George Packer—“Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal,” which examines how 2020 brought the country to its knees and offers ideas for how we might find our way back
3 p.m. Isabel Allende—“The Soul of a Woman,” a memoir
4:30 p.m. Daniel James Brown and Tom Ikeda—“Facing the Mountain: Japanese American Heroes of World War II,” about young Japanese Americans who emerged to become some of the nation’s most decorated heroes despite a tsunami or prejudice
5:45 p.m. Horizon: A Tribute in film to Barry Lopez, who received the inaugural Sun Valley Writers’ Conference Writer in the World Prize two weeks before his death on Christmas morning 2020
SUNDAY, JULY 18
9:30 a.m. Sheri Fink—“What I Saw: Stories from Inside the Pandemic,” which shows what a New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the Ebola crisis learned from getting the opportunity to report from inside more than two dozen hospitals around the country
3 p.m. Delia Owens—“Where the Crawdads Sing,” a novel about an abandoned girl surviving on her own in the marshlands of North Carolina who becomes part of a murder mystery and a love story
4:15 p.m. Larry Diamond and Noah Feldman—“How to Repair Our Democracy,” a conversation between a representative of the Hoover Institution and Harvard Law professor
5:30 p.m.—Ayad Akhtar—“Homeland Elegies,” a dramatic monologue from a work about hope and identity in a national coming apart at the seams
MONDAY, JULY 19
9:30 a.m. Lawrence Wright—“The Plague Year: America in the Time of COVID,” from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Looming Tower”
3 p.m. Tayari Jones—“An American Marriage: A Story of Love and Injustice,” which takes a look at what happens when a social justice issues collides with the lives of a newlywed couple
4:30 p.m. Noah Feldman—“Lincoln and the Broken Constitution,” which shows how the Constitution went from a rough and ready deal to a sacred text
5:45 p.m. “Horizon: A Tribute to Barry Lopez,” an encore film presentation
TUESDAY, JULY 20
9:30 a.m. David Wallace-Wells—“The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming,” a book on climate change that has been called “this generation’s Silent Spring”
4 p.m. Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis—“The Next World War and America’s Geopolitical Future: Fact and Fiction,” from two former military officers who have together written “2034: A Novel of the Next World War”
5:30 p.m. John Lithgow—“Master Class,” a conversation between Lithgow and PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about his career, which ranges from the goofy Dick Solomon in “3rd Rock From the Sun” to his portrayal of Winston Churchill in “The Crown.”