News & Notes
Featured Selections
The Beast in Your Head
I confess that I had never listened to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” all the way through until I read “The Beast in Your Head,” but that didn’t keep me from being drawn into Cynthia Marie Hoffman’s reflection on how the song informed her experience as a teenager with undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder. We’ve scheduled this essay for an upcoming issue of the magazine, but we’re sharing it early online in celebration of Cynthia’s new memoir in prose poems, Exploding Head, published this month by Persea Books. —David Mahaffey, Associate Editor
By Cynthia Marie Hoffman • February 22, 2024The Challenges—and Joys—of Pregnancy
Lucy Tan’s “Falling Action in Hoboken,” from our February issue, is the story of a young woman who begins dating a man she meets at a bar, then unexpectedly finds herself pregnant. The narrator describes her hesitations about carrying the pregnancy to term: “I think about the word womb a lot, about how it sounds like a cross between wound and tomb. I don’t want to be a mother. I am not qualified to be a mother.” This month’s archive selections explore the challenges—and joys—women may face when discovering they’re pregnant.
By Derek Askey, Associate Editor • February 20, 2024Listen to Poems from Our February Issue
Listen to the recordings of the three poems featured in our February issue. Each poem touches on a “what if”: an uncertain or changeable moment when a different future is possible.
By Nancy Holochwost, Associate Editor • February 16, 2024Nature and Nurture
Our January 2024 issue looks at how our environments and circumstances shape us and how we are shaping our environment. Collectively the voices in the issue grapple with not only the idea of nature versus nurture, but also with how we can nurture nature. These are questions that Sun contributors have contemplated for years, and I’ve pulled a few of my favorites from our archive.
By Staci Kleinmaier, Assistant Editor • January 30, 2024More from La Diáspora
In the January 2024 issue of The Sun Hank Baker’s photo essay, “La Diáspora,” recounts his time living in the Costa Chica, a coastal region in Mexico that is home to the greatest number of Black Mexicans in the country. Here are additional photos that Hank shared of the people he met during his time there.
By Hank Baker • January 19, 2024Listen to Poems from Our January Issue
Listen to the recordings of the three poems featured in our January issue. Each one contains an image that stops me in my tracks: a motionless panther; a dark mine shaft; the turn of a lock.
By Nancy Holochwost, Associate Editor • January 17, 2024Sy Safransky on Writing and The Sun
In our December 2023 issue we included a letter from our founder, Sy Safransky, who is stepping down after fifty years at the helm of The Sun. Presenting readers with a representative collection from his long tenure at the magazine is impossible. Any attempt would inevitably obscure more about his body of work than it reveals. Instead we’ve chosen to share some of Sy’s pieces about writing—and about The Sun.
By Derek Askey, Associate Editor • December 28, 2023Listen to Poems about Departures
We asked the poets in this month’s special poetry section to read their poems about leaving and letting go.
By Michael Bazzett, Peter Markus & Terry Lucas • December 13, 2023The Ghostly and the Ghastly
In this month’s interview [“Local Haunts,” interview by David Mahaffey], historian Colin Dickey examines why certain locations become associated with the supernatural. We’ve highlighted archive selections that explore the ghostly — and the ghastly — through shades of a graveyard, the horrors of Jaws and embarrassing parents, and email spam from the other side.
October 31, 2023Exploring Awe
Mark Leviton’s September interview with Dacher Keltner explores awe, including its physical and psychological benefits. This month’s archive selections expound on the different ways we experience it — whether profound, unexpected, or painful.
September 28, 2023Has something we published moved you? Fired you up? Did we miss the mark? Send A Letter