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

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 p...

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...

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 n...

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 majo...

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 W...

During his tenure as the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy became, in effect, our national healer. In a soft but strong voice, he spoke about the country’s maladies like addiction, depression, and violence, and he made the passionate case that loneliness was the contributor to many of those ills, including our over-dependence on social media. That message is at the heart of his book, Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection. In this episode and in conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Andrea Elliott, Dr. Murthy talks about the book, about his own bo...

Margaret Atwood—author of more than 60 books in almost every conceivable genre, recipient of more than 100 literary prizes—is a global icon. Like Kafka and Orwell before her, she and her writing have become part of the public discourse, wherever we live and whatever our age. Her intelligence is that vital and exacting, her wit that mischievous, her concerns – feminism, environmentalism, dystopian societies – that urgently relevant. The author is fond of quoting a Polish resistance fighter from the Second World War who once told her: “Pray that you will never have the occasion to be a hero.” As it’s turned out...

No U.S. secretary of state ever achieved such celebrity while in office as Henry Kissinger; immersed in the philosophy of Kant and the diplomacy of Metternich, he was hailed as one of the most important strategic thinkers America has ever produced. Yet no former secretary of state has been more vehemently criticized, most notably for sins of omission and commission in countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chile and East Timor. In this episode – recorded live at the 2024 Writers Conference – renowned historian NIALL FERGUSON, now completing the second of his two-volume biography of Kissinger, talks to New Yorker staff write...

In this episode, recorded live at the 2024 conference, biographer Jonathan Eig talks about his book on Martin Luther King, Jr., the first major biography of the civil rights leader in decades. Eig resurrects King from myth and history and brings him to vivid life, with all of his emotional complexity and unwavering courage, drawing a fresh and indelible portrait of a man whom he justifiably calls one of America’s founding fathers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Beyond the Page, lucky listener, you get to hear the great Judy Blume, the author of twenty-five books for young readers and four novels for adults that all-told have sold more than 90 million copies in forty languages. Blume’s cherished, ground-breaking 1970 young adult novel, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, has captivated and enlightened girls (and boys, and their parents) for 55 years and counting. I, for one, read it when I was 10, and it – along with about half a dozen other classic Blume titles – basically taught me everything I know, to this day, about girls an...

In this episode, recorded live at the 2024 Writers Conference, I sit down with bestselling crime novelist and TV writer/producer DENNIS LEHANE for a lively, wide-ranging conversation about how he approaches writing books vs. television scripts, his advice for writing true crime stories, as well as his journey developing his two latest AppleTV limited series, Black Bird and the upcoming Firebug, both starring Taron Egerton. Lehane is that rare novelist who has found acclaim and a large audience both in fiction and on the screen. A handful of his novels have been made into excellent films – Mystic River, Gone Ba...

We were already editing this episode when the L.A. fires broke out on January 7, 2025. In fact, our editor Dean Grinsfelder had to evacuate as the flames moved in. So did my 91-year-old dad, and so did my co-producer James Tooley’s parents and brothers and their families; one of those brothers saw his house burn to the ground.

All of which is to say, I guess, that podcasts, though they live in the ether, don’t exist in a vacuum, and neither do we. We’re all connected.

And so, while those impacted by the LA...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 mo...

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...

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 li...

On this episode, author and physician Abraham Verghese – who received the 2023 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference WRITER IN THE WORLD prize – brings us intimately and poetically into the heart of his remarkable, inspiring journey from his childhood in Ethiopia to his experiences as a young doctor in America during the AIDS epidemic, to his beginnings as a writer. Verghese would go on to become a professor of medicine at Stanford, as well as the author of the classic memoir My Own Country and the beloved, bestselling novels Cutting for Stone and The Covenant of Water. Here, he describes the meaning and arc...

In this episode, three of our most cogent and influential writers on global affairs and history – Anne Applebaum, Robert Kagan, and Evan Osnos – discuss the geopolitical ramifications of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the ongoing battle between democracy and authoritarianism, Vladimir Putin’s endgame, China’s power plays, and the future of the Western alliance, among other urgent questions.

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, the author of such books as RED FAMINE: STALIN’S WAR ON UKRAINE; GULAG: A HISTORY; and, most recently, TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: T...

Beyond the Page host John Burnham Schwartz talks with New Yorker staff writer Tad Friend, a longtime contributor to the magazine’s Letter from California and the author of two funny, poignant family memoirs, Cheerful Money and In the Early Times. In a notable testament to Friend’s curiosity, range, and talent, over the years his work has been chosen for “The Best American Travel Writing,” “The Best American Sports Writing,” “The Best American Crime Reporting,” and “The Best Technology Writing” – not to mention the James Beard award for feature writing he won in 2020. In this episode, a recent piece of Friend’s in t...

In this episode of Beyond the Page, SVWC Literary Director John Burnham Schwartz and writer Eric Schwartzel go Hollywood. Schwartzel covers the film industry in The Wall Street Journal's Los Angeles bureau and his first book “Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy,” detailed the growing influence of China on the American entertainment industry. John and Eric discuss Hollywood’s exestensial crisis, the China problem, and some important wars: culture wars, streaming wars, and Star Wars. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Beyond the Page, host John Burnham Schwartz talks with editor and Canadian publishing titan Louise Dennys about her extraordinary career working side by side with writers including Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan… to name just a few. Dennys talks about how she got started, what it’s like to nurture and promote some of the strongest literary voices of a generation, and the importance of freedom of expression, now more than ever.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Beyond the Page, Anne Taylor Fleming talks with award-winning food writer Aleksandra Crapanzano about her delightful and accessible new cookbook GATEAU: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes. The author shares her memories of being a child in Paris and talks about her dual passions for cooking and writing.  

Aleksandra Crapanzano is a James Beard-winning writer and dessert columnist for The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of The London Cookbook and Eat. Cook. LA., and her work has been widely anthologized, most notably in Best American Food Writing. She has been a frequent co...

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 curates and distills 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 is known for.

In this episode of Beyond teh Page, John Burnham Schwartz talks with Pulitzer Pri...

In this episode of Beyond the Page, BEN RHODES, Barack Obama’s former Deputy National Security Advisor, sits down at the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright AYAD AKHTAR for a deeply informed conversation about the state of the world we are living in today, with the rise of authoritarian leaders and ethno-nationalism and the flood of disinformation enabling them — and what responsibility America must take for these threats to freedom across the globe.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Beyond the Page, host John Burnham Schwartz talks with Rebecca Donner, winner of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography for “All the Frequent Troubles of our Days.” The story of Donner's great-great aunt, Mildred Harnack, who as a young midwestern grad student moved to Berlin and became one of the leaders of the largest underground resistance group to Hitler in the 1930s and 40s, All the Frequent Troubles is both an intimate portrait of a courageous young woman and also the story of how a charismatic demagogue captured a country. Donner shares Mildred's story and al...

When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? As our bodies decay, how – and why – do we keep going? In this episode, John Burnham Schwartz sits down with the ever-original and wittily ironic GEOFF DYER to discuss the author's own encounter with late middle age against the backdrop of the last days and last works of writers, painters, footballers, musicians, and tennis stars who’ve mattered to him throughout his life.  

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Beyond the Page, we offer something fun and different, a lively conversation between SVWC Literary Director John Burnham Schwartz and Associate Director Anne Taylor Fleming about the upcoming 2022 conference.  As the chief programmers, the longtime colleagues and friends will talk about some of the magical writers who are coming, from Evan Osnos and Heather McGhee to Ocean Vuong and Arthur Brooks, and chat about their selection process, including adding the wonderful PBS anchor Judy Woodruff to moderate some deep dives into the threats to democracy, here and around the globe.  

Learn more...

On this episode, John Burnham Schwartz talks with SUSAN ORLEAN, whose New Yorker articles across the last 30 years, along with books such as The Orchard Thief, The Library Book, her biography of the movie star dog Rin Tin Tin, and her latest collection of pieces, On Animals, have made her one of our most beloved and distinctive writers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Thomas Jefferson to be deplored as a slave-owner who had a family with a young woman he owned or is he to be celebrated as one of the country's most essential and gifted founders? Or, should he be both--condemned and revered? That is the question Annette Gordon-Reed, the brilliant Harvard law professor, historian, and author of the Pulitzer prize-winning The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, has long wrestled with. In conversation with SVWC associate director Anne Taylor Fleming, Gordon-Reed reflects on her evolving feelings about Jefferson and on the moral responsibility of the historian, and talks about her re...

In this episode of Beyond the Page, John Burnham Schwartz speaks with author TOBIAS WOLFF, renowned for his classic memoirs and short stories, for an intimate, wide-ranging conversation about life, literature, craft, and the never- ending mysteries and revelations that come from spending one’s time inhabiting the minds of others.

Tobias Wolff was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in Washington State. He attended Oxford University and Stanford University, where he now teaches English and creative writing. He has received the Story Prize, both the Rea Award and PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short sto...

In this episode, John Burnham Schwartz speaks with Noah Feldman, Harvard Law professor and renowned Constitutional scholar, whose groundbreaking new book, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America, takes us inside one of the more surprising realities of American History: in abolishing slavery and preserving our union, Abraham Lincoln was not adhering to the original Constitution of 1787, but rather tearing it up in order to save it through transformation. Feldman calls not only for a reassessment of Lincoln himself but also for a new look at America's founding document and its place in our law, our pol...

In this episode of Beyond the Page, acclaimed novelist, journalist, and Marine Corps veteran ELLIOT ACKERMAN talks to former CBS News Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief Christopher Isham about the United States military’s calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and what comes after.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 curates and distills 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 is known for.

In this episode of Beyond the Page, host John Burnham Schw...

In this episode of BEYOND THE PAGE, host John Burnham Schwartz talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning authors MARK STEVENS and ANNALYN SWAN about their landmark biography Francis Bacon: Revelations.

MARK STEVENS is the former art critic of New York magazine. He has been the art critic for The New Republic and Newsweek and has also written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times.

ANNALYN SWAN is the former arts editor of Newsweek and an award-winning music critic. She teaches biography at the Graduate Center of CUNY as well as at the Middlebury Bread Loaf...

In this episode of BEYOND THE PAGE, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, human rights activist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author SAMANTHA POWER – interviewed in the lead-up to her pending US Senate confirmation vote to be President Biden’s new administrator of USAID – discusses her distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to one of America’s leading foreign policy voices. Power transports us from her childhood in Dublin to the streets of war-torn Bosnia to the White House Situation Room and the world of high-stakes diplomacy, offering a compelling and deeply honest look at navigating the halls of...

In this episode, the host of American Public Media’s award-winning radio show The Splendid Table shares with us a few unforgettable food stories from his childhood, along with some of his current thoughts about the social experience of food during these pandemic times, the struggles and future of restaurants, and how certain tastes become identity markers for life.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices