David Mahaffey

The Practice of Peace

Selections from the Archive

Our July issue reminds us how violent conflicts can become seemingly intractable. Yet throughout The Sun’s history we’ve given voice to those who choose a different path—writers, readers, and interviewees who interrupt cycles of violence through acts of courage, vulnerability, and radical love. I’ve selected a few that journey from the foundations of nonviolence to its practice in daily life.

Masculinity and Gender in Transformation

Selections from the Archive

Richard Reeves opens his interview in this month’s issue with a stark, surprising observation: boys and men have been falling behind girls and women for about fifty years. As his conversation with Daniel McDermon unfolds, it becomes evident that the challenges facing men today resist simple solutions like revisiting the rigid gender roles of the past or reinforcing traditional masculine scripts. What’s needed, Reeves suggests, is a shift from deconstructing masculinity to reconstructing it—developing positive narratives and roles for boys and men that align with gender equality and acknowledge masculinity’s continued significance.

The interview brought to mind several pieces from The Sun’s archives that invite an expansive exploration of gender. The selections below examine the intricate ways gender shapes our lives. An interview with Jaclyn Siegel by Sam Risak—who also contributed an essay to this month’s issue—further explores masculinity through the lens of male body image. An essay by a nonbinary athlete navigating basketball courts and a short story about a girl discovering her identity through playground games reveal gender as both a bridge and a barrier, a source of strength and of vulnerability. A poem by John Struloeff traces the transmission of violence between generations of men and boys. Our readers share their own experiences of finding belonging—or choosing difference—across boundaries of race, class, sexuality, and ability.

Together these pieces illuminate distinct facets of gender’s role in society, from childhood through adulthood, offering nuanced perspectives on what masculinity means and might become.

Finding Ourselves in the Natural World

Selections from the Archive

From Gary Walts’s intimate photo essay of the LaBrie family farm to Chris Bursk’s poem about the persistent hope embodied in birdsong, these selections demonstrate how paying attention to our surroundings—field, forest, or farmyard—can ground us during uncertain times. They offer both refuge and perspective, revealing that when we truly observe nature, we’re not watching something separate from ourselves but participating in what Earle calls “the glorious green mantle of the earth,” the interconnected web of life to which we all belong.

Wrestling with Faith and Fear

Selections from the Archive

Our spiritual lives can shape us in ways both profound and surprising—whether we have faith or not. The essays and stories in this month’s issue invite readers to examine their own convictions about faith, fear, and evil. Because they resist easy explanations, these themes have recurred throughout The Sun’s history, revealing how personal conviction emerges not from abstract theological debates but from lived experience: a frightening airplane flight, a child’s struggle with religious indoctrination, a chess game between grandfather and grandson.

These selections demonstrate that questions of belief are rarely settled once and for all, but instead accompany us throughout our lives, evolving as we do.

Three Vivid, Varied Perspectives

Poetry in Our September Issue

The poems in our September issue invite me to share three vivid, varied perspectives. Luke Patterson’s prose poem “Extrication Day” offers a glimpse into the life of an EMT who sometimes needs his own rescue. In Luisa Muradyan’s “I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated,” the author deftly blends reflections on Jesus with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, reminding us that humor and sorrow are both human responses to the unimaginable. And for a journey into the surreal, Ernest Ògúnyẹmí’s “The Dream” transports us through a mesmerizing landscape of the mind, where lush language and dreamlike imagery intertwine in a symphony of stars and music.

The Beast in Your Head

Read an Essay from an Upcoming Issue

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.

Two Possible Climate Futures

Excerpts from New Novels

Our January 2024 issue explores causes and effects—between species, life choices, and how we care for others—subjects that were also on the minds of two Sun contributors as they wrote their new debut novels. Nick Fuller Googins and Debbie Urbanski imagined very different futures for humanity in the wake of unchecked climate change. We are pleased to share online excerpts from both books.

The Next Fifty Years

Editor Rob Bowers on the Future of The Sun

Like many who find their way to The Sun, our new editor, Rob Bowers, took a roundabout route, from finance to farming to publishing. Even his journey since he joined the staff seems unlikely: the business manager, the publisher, and now the successor to founding editor Sy Safransky. Rob has recounted some of his story in the magazine, but I thought readers might appreciate another opportunity to learn more about him, so I invited him to discuss his new role. We took a break from the crush of late-December deadlines to talk about folk songs, small farms, and the fundamental essence of The Sun.

Burning Questions

Meg Krawchuk On Our Changing Relationship With Fire

A fire manager making a decision may look like they’re in a position of power, but often they really have only one choice: to suppress the fire. If they don’t, they are opening themselves up to a Russian roulette of consequences depending on how the wind blows, quite literally.

Local Haunts

Colin Dickey On Place And Meaning In Ghost Stories

I think every place is haunted to one degree or another. And there will always be people who have a feeling when they visit a place, or believers who will say that they’ve seen something.