Our Summer Recommended Reading List

We hope you’ll enjoy these featured selections from the past twelve months, chosen by our readers and staff. If you missed the pieces when they appeared in the magazine or want to read them again, just click the links below. Our thanks to everyone who took time to let us know about the stories, poems, essays, and interviews they loved. (To send your own letter to the editor, click here.)

The Power Of Story: Jared Seide On How Listening To Each Other Can Restore Our Humanity
Interview by Hazel Kight Witham, June 2020

Read Seide’s recommended reading list here. To learn more about the practices he describes in the interview, check out his latest book, Where Compassion Begins.

Night Cows
By Jennifer Bowen Hicks, August 2020

Hicks was recently awarded a Pushcart Prize for her essay in The Sun. To read her other pieces from the magazine, click here.

White Folks
By John Holman, September 2020

Read associate editor Finn Cohen’s Q&A with Holman, “The Best Thing about Fiction,” here.

Les Calanques
By Melissa Febos, September 2020

Febos’s piece is included in her best-selling essay collection Girlhood, released this spring.

Love Poem
By Brionne Janae, October 2020

To read more of Janae’s poems in The Sun, click here.

Something I Might Say
By Stephanie Austin, February 2021

Austin is an Arizona-based fiction and memoir writer. This is her first piece in The Sun.

This Mortal Coil: Sheldon Solomon On How Fear Of Death Affects Our Lives
Interview by Deborah Golden Alecson, April 2021

After reading this interview, one reader shared that he’s adopted Solomon’s closing lines — “Be humble. Be grateful. It’s good for you. It’s good for the world.” — as his daily mantra.

My Late Breast
By Kathryn Jordan, April 2021

Read editorial assistant Staci Kleinmaier’s Q&A with Jordan, “What Poetry Can Do,” here. (Also included is a video of Jordan reading her poem.)

The Quiet Room
By M. Jones, May 2021

M. Jones is the pseudonym of a teacher. Reader Alexander Green writes, “I have never tried to find out more about an author in The Sun — until ‘The Quiet Room.’ . . . Writing like this deserves not just praise but widespread exposure of the sort not often granted an unknown public-school teacher.”

Inheritance
By Debbie Urbanski, June 2021

Urbanski’s first novel, What Comes after the End, will be published in 2022. Read more of her pieces from The Sun here.

For last year’s recommended reading list, click here.