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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...