Free Events

Join us for a discussion of Scott Graham's latest thriller, Death Valley Duel (2024 Torrey House Press), and Zak Podmore's Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell's Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River (Torrey House Press, Aug 2024). Pairing Zak's investigative reporting on water in the West with Scott's ecology-focused fiction series, don’t miss this absorbing and educational discussion. Chaired by Torrey House Press Co-Executive Director, Will Neville-Rehbehn

Location: Steddy Theater

Inspired by the wisdom of late teacher Dolores LaChapelle, we form a peer-to-peer sharing circle. The person holding the gourd speaks and everyone else listens. We ask people to bring a poem or story or song to share (their own or someone else's).

Location: Outdoors, Town Park Pavilion

Price: Free

Long-time friends Michelle Nijhuis and Paolo Bacigalupi discuss their artistic paths, from their early attempts and struggles to their eventual award-winning careers in fiction and narrative journalism.

Location: Grace Atrium + Courtyard

David Quammen has written 18 books, the latest being The Heartbeat of the Wild which is drawn from his 20 years writing about wild creatures and wild places on assignments for National Geographic Magazine. In this talk with Hampton Sides, Quammen will discuss his career and physical journeys, amid some of the most spectacular wild creatures and wild places on planet Earth.

Location: Steddy Theater

In the words of Douglas Adams, author of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.” Among the billions of light-years across space, humans have only traveled a very small fraction. In this panel discussion, science writers Rebecca Boyle, Laura Krantz, and Sarah Scoles discuss their research into the vastness of space — astronomy, the cosmos, anomalous phenomena, and more.

Location: King Community Room

Grab lunch and unwind while being read to by the 2024 Writers-in-Residence, Okwudili Nebeolisa, Amanda Rizkalla, Charlie Sorrenson, Phil Coleman, and Anna Fenerty.

Location: Grace Atrium + Feldberg East Courtyard

Join us for a conversation with Hampton Sides, best known for his gripping non-fiction adventure stories set in war or depicting epic expeditions of discovery and exploration. Sides is an acclaimed journalist and the author of best-selling histories, including most recently, The Wide Wide Sea. With Kevin Fedarko.

"Here is an adventure so strange and epic it rivals the greatest tales of myth. The cast of characters includes a restless Captain Cook, an anxious King George III on the verge of losing his American colonies, a London high society newly infatuated with the romance of the "noble savage," and a good-natured young Polynesian man heartily bent on an inter-island massacre. Sides turns this riveting narrative into a cautionary tale about the heedless cruelty of colonialism and the collateral damage that can result from even the best-intentioned first contact." — Peter Heller, New York Times bestselling author of The Dog Stars, The River, and The Guide

Location: Steddy Theater

Where does memory end and imagination begin? Autobiographical writing has occupied many of the most eloquent minds of our time. A panel of brilliant, envelope-pushing memoirists examines what happens when the most intimate details of a writer’s life become the subject of his or her professional work. With Suzi Q. Smith and Karen Auvinen.

Location: King Community Room

Purchase books by festival presenters and get them signed while mingling and enjoying the drinks from the Black Dragon Bar. Book sales with festival bookseller, Townie Books

Location: Grace Atrium, Black Dragon Bar

The ski-bum dream is changing. The elements that make ski towns and mountain communities unique and alluring are the same ingredients that are accelerating disproportionate growth and economic inequities.

Join Professor of Sociology at Yale University and author of Billionaire Wilderness, Justin Farrell, in conversation with investigative reporter for High Country News and Harpers, Nick Bowlin as they discuss the current realities ski towns face, and where they’re headed.

Location: Steddy Theater

From strivey hustle to making and maintaining success, award-winning writers discuss their paths and the many twists their authorial arcs have taken. With Shelley Read, Claire Boyles, Olivia Chadha, and Anne Hillerman. Chaired by Manuel Aragon.

Location: King Community Room

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most successful interconnected film series to ever exist, but at the turn of the century, they were crawling their way back from bankruptcy. Dave Gonzales, co-author of MCU The Reign of Marvel Studios, outlines how Marvel Studios cracked the formula for turning seemingly lackluster intellectual property into profitable blockbuster movies, and speculates on whether Marvel can ever recapture the cultural influence they had from 2012 - 2019.

Location: Off-campus at the Majestic Theatre

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Timothy Egan is the author of ten books, including his most recent, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them. His book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won a National Book Award for nonfiction.

Location: Steddy Theater

About the book-
The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.

Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize—winning reporter and the author of nine other books, most recently the highly acclaimed A Pilgrimage to Eternity and The Immortal Irishman, a New York Times bestseller. His book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won a National Book Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. His account of photographer Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, won the Carnegie Medal for nonfiction.

Celebrate Steven Dunn and Katie Jean Shinkle’s highly acclaimed new book over drinks and toasts, and book giveaways.

Location: Off-Site, TBA

About the book -
Enter a world where time stands still and summer never ends. In the enchanted town of Tannery Bay, it’s July 37, and then July 2 again, but the year is a mystery. Trapped in an eternal loop, the residents embark on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery, unity, and defiance against the forces that seek to divide them.

Otis and Joy, intrepid siblings, work with their family and friends to oppose a formidable adversary: The Owners. These cunning and ruthless old men, driven by insatiable greed, hold the town hostage, exploiting its resources and dividing its people. In this powerful #OwnVoices narrative, Tannery Bay is a captivating tale of Black Joy and Queer Joy and the ways in which family is both biological and chosen, where love transcends boundaries, and where art is a vehicle for change.