This summer, Michelle DeLong and Kira Compton, two creative writing graduate students at Boise State University, attended the 2024 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference (SVWC) as Writing Fellows, a prestigious program that brings aspiring writers from across the country to the conference for free. Selected from a competitive group of applicants from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, WriteGirl LA, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and Boise State University’s Creative Writing MFA Program, DeLong and Compton joined a cohort of writers at the SVWC, attending talks, meeting with acclaimed writers and forming a tight community.
The Sun Valley Writers’ Conference “strives to bring together readers, writers, and artists of diverse age, background, and experience to be informed, enlightened, challenged, and inspired by a world-class literary program in the great outdoors,” according to their website. At the 2024 conference, presenting writers included Margaret Atwood, Vinson Cunningham, Padma Lakshmi, Anne Lamott, Abraham Verghese, and many more.
For the past eight years, the Boise State Creative Writing MFA Program and the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference have partnered to allow MFA students to attend the conference, providing them with an invaluable professional and creative experience.
You can read more about the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference here.