Andrew Snee

Staying Active

From the Archive

In our April interview [“Lesson Plan”] Pranav Jani, an English professor at The Ohio State University, discusses the current state of activism on college campuses. With the Trump administration bullying schools into cracking down on political speech, are our institutions of higher learning still a free marketplace of ideas?

Turn on the News

Selections from the Archive

In this month’s interview Columbia University journalism professor Sheila Coronel talks about the challenges the news media face today: consolidation of ownership, competition with online influencers, and accusations from the White House that they are an “enemy of the people.” The Sun’s founder, Sy Safransky, left the newspaper business in the 1960s in pursuit of what he called the “real truth,” which he felt was bigger than the day’s news, and the magazine he started has largely reflected that view. But that hasn’t stopped our authors over the years from reflecting on the role of journalism or the importance of a free press.

Become a Friend of The Sun

Putting this magazine together has remained a profoundly human endeavor, the work of many hands, even as the media landscape has become more automated.

Starting Over

Selections from the Archive

This month’s selections from The Sun’s archive explore what it means to be forced to leave home and start over someplace else. We begin with a short story from Ron Currie in which a far-from-all-powerful God appears in Sudan in the guise of a woman fleeing civil war.

From there we visit a New York City harbor in the late 1940s, where a young photographer named Clemens Kalischer captured images of displaced Europeans arriving in the US in the aftermath of World War II.

In Diane Lefer’s interview “Land of the Free?” Tram Nguyen, whose family was among those who escaped Vietnam in fishing boats in the 1970s, discusses hostile attitudes toward immigrants following 9/11.

Poet Mark Smith-Soto, who came to the US as a child, writes about learning to speak like an American in “Accent.”

And finally our readers share stories of seeking, finding, and offering refuge.

We hope these works inspire compassion and understanding for refugees everywhere.

New-Release Roundup

October 2025

Recent book releases from Sun authors are as eclectic as the magazine itself. They include a book of essays about how we care for one another, a memoir about being released from prison, a collection of stories that combine the supernatural and the mundane, and a coffee-table book about klezmer musicians. Pick one up today and support these wonderful writers and artists.

Giving till It Hurts

Elizabeth Miki Brina on Money and Parents

In her essay “The Work We Do,” which appears in our December issue, Elizabeth Miki Brina describes how her mother, an immigrant from Okinawa who came to the US at the age of twenty-six, happily paid for many of her daughter’s expenses even after Elizabeth was well into adulthood. It’s a subject sure to irk anyone who had to pay their own way from a young age. I talked to Elizabeth about money and parents and the fraught nature of writing about both.

Memories on Trial

An Interview with Erin McReynolds

In her mid-twenties Erin McReynolds lost her mother, who was murdered by the man she was living with. In her essay in this month’s issue, “And These Too Are Defensive Wounds,” Erin struggles with her feelings toward the man who is currently serving a prison sentence for killing her mother, and who is now up for parole. Her initial impulse is not to perpetuate the suffering caused by the murder, but would supporting his bid for freedom really be the right thing to do?

A House Is Not a Home

The buyer closed on the property in late April of this year. Despite all the logical, practical, convincing reasons for the sale, letting go wasn’t easy. The Sun’s offices had been in that house since 1989, and photos of its well-landscaped exterior had become familiar to subscribers, a couple dozen of whom would stroll up the front walk each year and knock on the door, hoping to get a glimpse of where their favorite magazine was produced and to meet the people who created it. If he was in, our founding editor, Sy Safransky, always welcomed them.

Thoreau and Me

Read an Essay from an Upcoming Issue

If I had to pick a Sun author who comes closest to achieving a truly simple existence, it would be the poet Sparrow, who writes, “I don’t live off the grid, but I’m close. I live right on the edge of the grid.” Fittingly he wrote the following tribute to Henry David Thoreau.

The essay will appear in a forthcoming print issue of The Sun, but we’re sharing it early online in celebration of Thoreau’s birthday today, July 12.

A House Is Not a Home

For more than twenty-five years I worked in a two-story bungalow at 107 North Roberson Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. My office was on the second floor. I worked at that address, The Sun’s office, longer than I have lived in any house. I’m still The Sun’s senior editor, but I’ve been doing my job from home since March 2020, when the staff decided to work remotely because of the pandemic. Without a full staff coming in every day, activity at 107 North Roberson decreased drastically. Keeping an office where the handwritten editorial-planning calendar in the hall hadn’t been updated since the spring of 2020 seemed like a waste. The board of directors agreed: selling was the right thing to do. The buyer closed on the property in late April of this year. Despite all the logical, practical, convincing reasons for the sale, letting go wasn’t easy.