Fifteen talks will be free and open to the public this July 17-20 for the 2021 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. Join us on the lawn, where live Pavilion talks will be streamed to the big screen for 3-4 talks per day. Seating will consist of pods of 2, 4, 6, or 8 people and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis beginning each morning at 9:00 AM. The preliminary lawn talk schedule is listed below – please see our Lawn Talks page for more information including talk descriptions.

We ask that you be courteous to those around you by bringing low-backed chairs and limiting speaking during the presentations. Feel free to bring picnic items but please leave your pets at home. It will likely be HOT in the afternoons – please plan accordingly and bring water, hats, etc. to stay comfortable during the talks. We look forward to seeing you!

Saturday, July 17

9:30 AM – George Packer “Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal”

3:00 PM – Isabel Allende “The Soul of a Woman”

4:30 PM – Daniel James Brown & Tom Ikeda “Facing the Mountain: Japanese American Heroes of World War II”

5:45 PM – Horizon: A Tribute to Barry Lopez

Sunday, July 18

9:30 AM – Sheri Fink “What I Saw: Stories From Inside the Pandemic”

3:00 PM – Delia Owens “Where the Crawdads Sing”

4:30 PM – Larry Diamond & Noah Feldman “How to Repair Our Democracy: A Conversation Between Larry Diamond & Noah Feldman”

5:45 PM – Ayad Akhtar “Homeland Elegies”

Monday, July 19

9:30 AM – Lawrence Wright “The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid”

3:00 PM – Tayari Jones “An American Marriage: A Story of Love and Injustice”

4:30 PM – Noah Feldman “Lincoln and the Broken Constitution”

5:45 PM – Horizon: A Tribute to Barry Lopez

Tuesday, July 20

9:30 AM – David Wallace-Wells “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming”

4:00 PM – Elliot Ackerman & Admiral James Stavridis “The Next World War and America’s Geopolitical Future: Fact and Fiction”

5:30 PM – John Lithgow “Master Class with John Lithgow”