Our annual Student / Author Luncheon is a collaboration between the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference and local high schools, offering students the opportunity to engage directly with an author from the Conference each year.

At the 2026 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference, local high school students sat down for a private luncheon with acclaimed journalist and bestselling author Beth Macy.

Macy is a Virginia-based journalist known for writing about outsiders, underdogs, and communities left behind by economic and political change. She is the author of three New York Times bestselling books, including Factory Man and Dopesick, which was adapted into the Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning Hulu series. Her latest book, Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, combines memoir and reporting to explore her working-class upbringing alongside larger questions about class, identity, opportunity, and the rural-urban divide.

During the 2025–26 school year, SVWC donated copies of Paper Girl to local classrooms—students at Wood River High School and Silver Creek High School read the book as part of their coursework, giving them the opportunity to explore its themes and develop questions before meeting Macy in person.

On July 19, students were invited to attend Macy’s Conference presentation about Paper Girl, followed by a book signing and the private Student / Author Luncheon on the lawn at Dollar Cottage. There, they had the opportunity to ask questions, discuss the book, and hear directly from Macy about her work and life as a journalist and writer.

Past participating writers include Colson Whitehead and The Underground Railroad (2017), Karan Mahajan and The Association of Small Bombs (2018), Dave Eggers and The Circle (2019), Anthony Doerr and Cloud Cuckoo Land (2022), Alejandra Campoverdi and First Gen (2024), Erling Kagge and After the North Pole (2025), and Beth Macy and Paper Girl (2026).

Photo credits: Tessa Sheehan