BY KAREN BOSSICK

A shipwreck tale, America at a crossroads and a look at what the heck is going on down in Florida from one of America’s funniest writers…all these and more are among the Pavilion talks that Wood River Valley residents can purchase tickets for during July’s Sun Valley Writers’ Conference.

Tickets for six talks inside the Sun Valley Pavilion will go on sale Wednesday, June 14. Tickets will be $35 each, available at https://svwc.com/single-event-tickets. As always, Wood River Valley students and teachers may attend Pavilion talks for free if space is available.

The 2023 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference will be held July 22-24 at Sun Valley Resort and will include a host of Pavilion talks and smaller, more intimate discussions inside tents amidst breakfast on the Lodge Terrace and barbecue lunches on the Pavilion Lawn.

Pavilion talks for which single tickets are available are:

SATURDAY, July 22

• Ezra Klein in Conversation with Ed Yong, 3:30-4:45 p.m.

  Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist ED YONG discusses his new bestselling book, “An Immense World,” with The New York Times columnist and podcast host EZRA KLEIN.

• Abraham Verghese and The Covenant of Water, 5:15-6:30 p.m.

  More than a decade in the writing, ABRAHAM VERGHESE’s second novel spans the years 1900 to 1977. It is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, where it follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere.

  A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, “The Covenant of Water” is a hymn to progress in medicine and a testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today.

  SUNDAY, July 23

• America at a Crossroads Panel Discussion with Evan Osnos, Imani Perry and Maria Hinojosa moderated by Judy Woodruff, 3:30-4:30 p.m.

  In the time since she stepped down as PBS NewsHour’s anchor, JUDY WOODRUFF has been engaged in a national reporting project, traveling and listening to people talk about their fears and their hopes. She will share some of her early findings with three other passionate observers of this country: Pulitzer Prize winner MARIA HINOJOSA, Anchor and Executive Producer of Latino USA; National Book 3 Award winner EVAN OSNOS, who chronicled his own transnational reporting journey in Wildland, the Making of America’s Fury; and IMANI PERRY, 2022 National Book Award-winning author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation.

  They will look at the complicated issues that divide us—race, immigration, and inequality—and talk about the beliefs and values that still hold the country together.

• The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Survival and Savagery with David Grann, 5-6 p.m.

  It seems that every book that award-winning New Yorker staff writer DAVID GRANN writes (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Lost City of Z) turns into a bestseller and then into an excellent major movie or TV series. Join Grann for the story behind his riveting new book—a grand 18th-century tale of human behavior at the extremes, in which not only the captain and crew of the ship The Wager ended up on trial, but also the very idea of empire itself

  MONDAY, July 24

• And Now for Something Completely Different: The Storytelling Revolution with Jake Barton, 3:30-4:30 p.m.

  As the founder of the experience design firm Local Projects, JAKE BARTON has time and again reinvented storytelling, winning every major design award with projects like the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City; Bryan Stevenson’s The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama; The Greenwood Rising Black Wall Street History Center 4 in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Planet Word and Frank Gehry’s Eisenhower Memorial, both in Washington, D.C.

  His life’s work is to use technology to create unforgettable narratives that inspire action through immersive storytelling of the most human kind. Barton will unpack how his storytelling work changes audiences and how he is now focusing on the most formidable storytelling challenge there is—the existential problem of climate change.

• Swamp Story: Dave Barry’s Florida, 5-6 p.m.

DAVE BARRY, one of the funniest writers alive, will, in his own words, “talk a little about my new novel Swamp Story, but mainly to use it as a springboard to talk about Florida, because everybody seems interested in Florida these days, in the sense of wondering what the hell is going on down here.

“From there I’d like to branch out to the problems facing the nation in general, and what I would do to fix them if I had the authority, which we should all pray I never will. The one promise I can make is that nobody will come away from my talk with any useful information.”