Community Engagement

At SVWC we are proud to call the Sun Valley area home.

Your contribution to the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference goes beyond the Conference itself; it also helps fund our school and community programs, educating, inspiring, and fueling a love of literature and learning among students, teachers, and the entire Wood River Valley.

We collaborate year-round with the area’s schools, libraries, and other nonprofit organizations.

Please read more about our community initiatives and outreach efforts below.

Thanks to the support of our generous donors, we are able to provide free access to much of the SVWC content.

EDUCATE . . . Scholars & Fellows Program

Writing Fellows

SVWC is committed to bringing aspiring writers to the Conference and providing them with inspiration and direction as they embark on their creative paths. We have expanded our program for 2023 to include eight Writing Fellows from programs around the nation including the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, WriteGirl LA, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and Boise State University’s Creative Writing MFA Program. Their bios are below.

Sofía Aguilar is a Chicana writer and editor based in Los Angeles, California. Her work has appeared in L.A. Times, Refinery29 Somos, and New Orleans Review, among other publications. As an alum of WriteGirl, Sofía earned a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. STREAMING SERVICE: golden shovels made for tv and STREAMING SERVICE: season two are her self-published poetry chapbooks.

Desmond Everest Fuller holds an MFA in fiction from Boise State University and was the associate editor of The Idaho Review for the 2023 issue. His fiction appears in Indiana Review, Aquifer: The Florida Review online, Hawaii Pacific Review, West Trade Review, The Gravity of the Thing, and elsewhere.

Siqi Liu is a fiction MFA student and Rona Jaffe fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Pushcart Prize 2021, and The Harvard Advocate, and has received support from Kundiman, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and others. She grew up in China and Illinois, and currently resides in Iowa City and New York City.

Banna Desta is an Eritrean and Ethiopian-American playwright and screenwriter who crafts stories about and for the African diaspora. Her work for the stage has been supported and developed by SPACE on Ryder Farm, Audible Theater, Rattlestick Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, National Black Theater and the Dramatists Guild Foundation.

Reyumeh Ejue is a writer from Nigeria, whose work has been published in literary journals including Green Blotter Review and Afreada. He is currently a Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he is a candidate for an MFA in Creative Writing.

Hannah Lucille Phillips is a writer from the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania and a fiction candidate in Boise State’s MFA program. Currently, she is working on her first novel while serving as the associate editor of The Idaho Review. Her debut TV pilot, OUT, is in post-production through BSU’s NTVI (Narrative Television Initiative) and will premiere in early 2024.

Michael Shayan is an Emmy Award-nominated, queer, Iranian-American writer and performer from “Tehran-geles,” California. His plays have been produced and developed at Audible, South Coast Repertory, The Geffen Playhouse, La MaMa, Ojai Playwrights Conference, and The Lark, among others. Fellowships include Sundance and Lambda Literary. Consulting Producer: “The Book of Queer” (Discovery+). BA: Harvard College. MFA: Brooklyn College, Playwriting.

Gillian Esquivia-Cohen (US/Colombia) is a writer, translator, and educator. She holds an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, an MA in Bilingual/Bicultural Education from Columbia University, and is Contributing Editor at the hispanophone journal Polis Poesía. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, The Kenyon Review Online, and Latin American Literature Today. She is currently revising her first novel.

INSPIRE . . . Local School Initiatives

Community Scholars Student/Author Luncheon and Reading Program

SVWC, in conjunction with local high school teachers, chooses an author and book with a topic pertinent to students. SVWC donates copies of the book for students in the spring/summer Language Arts classes. The students read the book and are invited to attend any of the talks given by that writer during the Conference, including Pavilion talks or smaller breakouts.

Most years, the students are also invited to join the writer at a private luncheon hosted by SVWC in July during the Conference. In 2022, the featured author was Anthony Doerr, who discussed his book, Cloud Cuckoo Land. Past authors have included Colson Whitehead discussing The Underground Railroad, Dave Eggers, with his novel The Circle, and Karan Mahajan and his novel, The Association of Small Bombs.

Fall Schools Speaker

In the fall of 2019, SVWC brought celebrated middle grade author, Pablo Cartaya, to the Wood River Valley to visit the area’s schools and speak to students and teachers, free of charge. He spoke to nearly 800 students at the Wood River Middle School and, in collaboration with The Community Library and Iconoclast Books, also gave a free presentation and book signing in the library’s Lecture Hall. We look forward to bringing this program back soon.

“Thank you for sharing your story with us. I appreciate that you’re encouraging students to learn their story and to get engaged with their family roots. Now it’s my time to find my story.” – WRMS 6th Grader, Thank You Note to Pablo Cartaya

“Thank you for coming to our school and giving the most awesome book talk ever! I really liked the way you told the stories – it made me laugh so hard I almost cried. Not lying.” – WRMS 7th Grader, Thank You Note to Pablo Cartaya

“Thank you for giving us your story. I have always thought authors of books are celebrities, but you reminded me that they are just ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.” – WRMS 6th Grader, Thank You Note to Pablo Cartaya

Free Student/Teacher Talks

In an effort to share the Writers’ Conference with our community, local students and teachers are invited to attend Pavilion talks for free, as space is available.