
Beyond the Page: The Best of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference
by Sun Valley Writers’ Conference
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Insights are generated by CastFox AI using publicly available data, episode content, and proprietary models.
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Total monthly reach
Estimated from 2 chart positions in 2 markets.
By chart position
- 🇬🇧GB · Performing Arts#1165K to 30K
- 🇮🇸IS · Performing Arts#3710K to 30K
- Per-Episode Audience
Est. listeners per new episode within ~30 days
7.5K to 30K🎙 ~2x weekly·60 episodes·Last published 1mo ago - Monthly Reach
Unique listeners across all episodes (30 days)
15K to 60K🇬🇧50%🇮🇸50% - Active Followers
Loyal subscribers who consistently listen
4.5K to 18K
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* Data sourced directly from platform APIs and aggregated hourly across all major podcast directories.
On the show
From 10 epsHosts
Recent guests
Recent episodes
Ruth Reichl – The Paris Novel
May 29, 2026
32m 47s
Dan Jones - WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES HAS DONE FOR THE MODERN WORLD
Mar 6, 2026
33m 26s
SALMAN RUSHDIE: WRITER IN THE WORLD
Feb 12, 2026
32m 22s
EVAN OSNOS: “The Haves and Have-Yachts”
Jan 17, 2026
31m 17s
Doris Kearns Goodwin: “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s”
Dec 15, 2025
29m 27s
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| Date | Episode | Topics | Guests | Brands | Places | Keywords | Sponsor | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5/29/26 | ![]() Ruth Reichl – The Paris Novel✨ | food writingnovel+4 | Ruth Reichl | Sun Valley Writers’ ConferenceThe Paris Novel+2 | — | Ruth ReichlThe Paris Novel+5 | — | 32m 47s | |
| 3/6/26 | ![]() Dan Jones - WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES HAS DONE FOR THE MODERN WORLD✨ | Middle Ageshistory+4 | Dan Jones | OxfordParis+5 | — | Edward IIIimpeachment+5 | — | 33m 26s | |
| 2/12/26 | ![]() SALMAN RUSHDIE: WRITER IN THE WORLD✨ | freedom of speechliterature+4 | Salman Rushdie | Knife:Meditations after an Attempted Murder | — | Salman RushdieColum McCann+5 | — | 32m 22s | |
| 1/17/26 | ![]() EVAN OSNOS: “The Haves and Have-Yachts”✨ | billionaireswealth inequality+4 | Evan Osnos | New YorkerSun Valley Writers’ Conference+1 | — | billionairesyachts+5 | — | 31m 17s | |
| 12/15/25 | ![]() Doris Kearns Goodwin: “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s”✨ | 1960s historypersonal memoir+3 | Doris Kearns Goodwin | Sun Valley Writers’ ConferenceAn Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s | — | Doris Kearns Goodwin1960s+3 | — | 29m 27s | |
| 11/11/25 | ![]() Ocean Vuong "The Emperor of Gladness"✨ | immigrationliterature+4 | Ocean Vuong | Sun Valley Writers’ ConferenceNight Sky with Exit Wounds+3 | VietnamEast Hartford, CT | Ocean VuongVietnam+5 | — | 27m 49s | |
| 10/7/25 | ![]() Dr. Vivek Murphy, From the Heart✨ | lonelinesshuman connection+4 | Dr. Vivek Murthy | United StatesTogether: The Healing Power of Human Connection | — | Surgeon Generalhealing+5 | — | 43m 43s | |
| 7/9/25 | ![]() Margaret Atwood✨ | literaturefeminism+3 | Margaret Atwood | Sun Valley Writers ConferenceWriter in the World Prize | — | Margaret Atwoodliterary prizes+5 | — | 34m 10s | |
| 6/18/25 | ![]() Niall Ferguson and Evan Osnos on Kissinger✨ | Henry Kissingerforeign policy+4 | Niall FergusonEvan Osnos | New YorkerNational Book Award | BangladeshCambodia+2 | KissingerNiall Ferguson+5 | — | 35m 55s | |
| 5/3/25 | ![]() Jonathan Eig on Martin Luther King, Jr.✨ | biographycivil rights+4 | Jonathan Eig | Sun Valley Writers’ Conference | — | biographyMartin Luther King, Jr.+5 | — | 30m 47s | |
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| 4/11/25 | ![]() The Radical Honesty of Judy Blume | In this episode of Beyond the Page, lucky listener, you get to hear the great Judy Blume, the author of twenty-five books for young readers and four novels for adults that all-told have sold more than 90 million copies in forty languages. Blume’s cherished, ground-breaking 1970 young adult novel, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, has captivated and enlightened girls (and boys, and their parents) for 55 years and counting. I, for one, read it when I was 10, and it – along with about half a dozen other classic Blume titles – basically taught me everything I know, to this day, about girls and growing up. So consider me yet one more reader for whom Judy Blume was, and remains, a true literary rock star. Here she is, recorded live at the 2024 Writers Conference, in conversation with her friend JEFFREY BROWN of the PBS NewsHour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 30m 47s | ||||||
| 3/6/25 | ![]() Dennis Lehane: Confessions of a Novelist Turned TV Showrunner | In this episode, recorded live at the 2024 Writers Conference, I sit down with bestselling crime novelist and TV writer/producer DENNIS LEHANE for a lively, wide-ranging conversation about how he approaches writing books vs. television scripts, his advice for writing true crime stories, as well as his journey developing his two latest AppleTV limited series, Black Bird and the upcoming Firebug, both starring Taron Egerton. Lehane is that rare novelist who has found acclaim and a large audience both in fiction and on the screen. A handful of his novels have been made into excellent films – Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, and Shutter Island, to name a few – and in recent years he has become a much in-demand television creator and showrunner, a role that first began for him two decades ago, when he joined the now-famous Season 4 writers room on David Simon’s iconic show The Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 30m 53s | ||||||
| 1/22/25 | ![]() John Vaillant: Fire Weather | We were already editing this episode when the L.A. fires broke out on January 7, 2025. In fact, our editor Dean Grinsfelder had to evacuate as the flames moved in. So did my 91-year-old dad, and so did my co-producer James Tooley’s parents and brothers and their families; one of those brothers saw his house burn to the ground. All of which is to say, I guess, that podcasts, though they live in the ether, don’t exist in a vacuum, and neither do we. We’re all connected. And so, while those impacted by the LA fires regroup and recover, we want to share an important story – recorded live at the 2024 Conference – about another, eerily similar and catastrophic fire that was the centerpiece of journalist John Vaillant’s award-winning book Fire Weather. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 33m 36s | ||||||
| 12/13/24 | ![]() Kristin Hannah in conversation with Jenny Emery Davidson | In this episode, recorded live at the 2024 Sun Valley Writers' Conference, novelist Kristin Hannah talks to Jenny Emery Davidson, the executive director of The Community Library in Ketchum, Idaho, about her #1 New York Times bestselling novel The Women. In The Women, Hannah (known for previous bestselling historical novels such as The Nightingale, The Great Alone, and The Four Winds) takes up the Vietnam epic and re- centers the story on the experience of the military nurses who worked under fire, on bases and in field hospitals throughout the war, but whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has all too often been forgotten. Like so many male soldiers of the time, Frankie McGrath, the novel’s heroine, finds herself overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed and politically divided America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 29m 10s | ||||||
| 12/2/24 | ![]() Ancient Wisdom and the Enduring Power of Community | In a time of loneliness and isolation, social rupture and alienation, what will it take to mend our broken hearts and rebuild our society? In this episode, one of Ameriica’s leading rabbis, and the author of the book The Amen Effect, Sharon Brous makes the case that it is through honoring our most basic human instinct – the yearning for real connection – that we reawaken our shared humanity and begin to heal. In a conversation with legendary bookseller Mitchell Kaplan recorded live at the 2024 Writers Conference, Brous pairs heart-driven anecdotes from her experience building and pastoring to a leading-edge faith community over the past two decades with ancient Jewish wisdom and contemporary science. Hers is a clarion call: the sense of belonging engendered by our genuine presence is not only a social and biological need, but a moral and spiritual necessity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 42m 03s | ||||||
| 10/7/24 | ![]() Putin, Ukraine, and the Future of Russia | 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 Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to discuss his most recent book, War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, and the state of all things Putin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 33m 30s | ||||||
| 7/16/24 | ![]() Patrick Radden Keefe | 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 separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 24m 09s | ||||||
| 5/17/24 | ![]() Curtis Sittenfeld | 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 romantic comedy, her approach to genre and craft in previous novels such as American Wife, Rodham, and Eligible, and other stories from her literary journey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 20m 21s | ||||||
| 2/24/24 | ![]() Javier Zamora in conversation with Mitchell Kaplan | 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 to forget, either. And that is the power of great literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 22m 10s | ||||||
| 1/18/24 | ![]() Swamp Story: Dave Barry's Florida | 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, Dave assures us that the one promise he can make is that nobody will come away from this talk with any useful information whatsoever. Here’s Dave Barry, closing the 2023 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 34m 59s | ||||||
| 12/15/23 | ![]() Andrea Elliott in conversation with Ayad Akhtar | 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 and the moral failings of our institutions impact the most marginal among us. Elliott tells us about Dasani's life and how it is both singular and emblematic, and she talks about her own passions for the deeply immersive journalism that is the hallmark of her professional life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 42m 20s | ||||||
| 11/9/23 | ![]() Abraham Verghese: Writer in the World | 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 beloved, bestselling novels Cutting for Stone and The Covenant of Water. Here, he describes the meaning and arc of his personal journey with heartfelt tenderness and appreciation, offering new insights into his vision and practice of his joint vocations, and of the profound link between healing and storytelling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 28m 06s | ||||||
| 9/27/23 | ![]() Will Democracy Survive? | 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 author of such books as RED FAMINE: STALIN’S WAR ON UKRAINE; GULAG: A HISTORY; and, most recently, TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: THE SEDUCTIVE LURE OF AUTHORITARIANSIM. Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at Brookings, a contributing columnist at the Washington Post, and the author, most recently, of THE GHOST AT THE FEAST: AMERICA AND THE COLLAPSE OF WORLD ORDER, 1900-1941. Evan Osnos is a New Yorker staff writer, and the author of WILDLAND: THE MAKING OF AMERICA’S FURY as well as the National Book Award-winning AGE OF AMBITION: CHASING FORTUNE, TRUTH AND FAITH IN THE NEW CHINA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 41m 10s | ||||||
| 9/1/23 | ![]() Endangered Species: Tad Friend and the Art of Long-Form Journalism | 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 Writing” – not to mention the James Beard award for feature writing he won in 2020. In this episode, a recent piece of Friend’s in the magazine about “a conservation N.G.O. that infiltrates wildlife-trafficking rings to bring them down” becomes a conversational prism for a larger discussion about the writer’s methodology and philosophy of long-form journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 30m 17s | ||||||
| 5/26/23 | ![]() From Streaming Wars to Star Wars with Erich Schwartzel | 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, streaming wars, and Star Wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | 34m 17s | ||||||
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Chart Positions
2 placements across 2 markets.
Chart Positions
2 placements across 2 markets.





