Joining us this summer, July 20-22, 2024!

The Sun Valley Writers’ Conference (SVWC) is pleased to announce that its 2024 Writer in the World Prize will be awarded to Margaret Atwood, in recognition of her contributions to literature, freedom of expression, and social consciousness as a poet, novelist, story writer, essayist, and environmental activist. Atwood will be one of the presenters at the Conference this July. Established and funded anonymously by SVWC board members, the $20,000 Writer in the World Prize “recognizes a writer whose life’s work embodies a rare combination of literary talent and moral imagination, helping us to better understand the world and our place in it.”

Atwood is the author of more than 50 books in multiple genres and forms, including her now iconic 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award and she is a two-time winner of the Booker Prize (for 2000’s The Blind Assassin and 2019’s The Testaments).

As SVWC Board Member Mary Anne Dolan announced today, “It is a privilege and a joy for us to celebrate Margaret Atwood, a literary force in the world. Her sharp eye on the realities of life combined with her uncommon imagination, her wit, social perspicacity, and moral conscience have given us a literary legacy for the ages. She reminds us of the essential importance of writing in our lives, and that, as she has famously said, ‘A word after a word after a word is power.’”

John Burnham Schwartz, Literary Director at SVWC, adds, “Margaret Atwood’s lifelong work as a writer and activist marks her as one of the most relevant and influential artists in our culture today. Her literary imagination and intellectual courage have brought the dangers of authoritarianism and the importance of environmentalism to indelible life for millions of readers everywhere, helping to urgently shape our understanding not only of where we have been, but of where we must go.”

The 2024 Writer in the World Prize will be officially awarded to Margaret Atwood in person as part of the opening keynote event at the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference in the Sun Valley Pavilion on Saturday, July 20 at 5:15 PM. The presentation will include an original film as well as a live event with the honoree. The inaugural Writer in the World Prize was awarded at the 2021 Conference to Barry Lopez. In 2023, the award was given to Abraham Verghese.

This July marks the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference 30^th anniversary. Full passes for the Conference will be available for sale online at svwc.com/attend on February 22 at 10:00 AM (Mountain Time). Individual tickets for the presentation will be sold online in mid-June. Additionally, select talks will be livestreamed for free at svwc.com/livestream and also broadcast to the Pavilion lawn at no charge. For early access to passes as well as numerous special benefits, learn more about joining the SVWC Family of Donors at svwc.com/support.

Photo Credit: Luis Mora