News & Notes

March: This Month in Sun History

A Look Back for Our 50^th Year of Publication

Sitting with his first wife, Judy, and a friend on a sunny beach in Algeciras, Spain, Sy Safransky embarked on a spiritual journey that ultimately led him to create the magazine you now hold in your hand. In March 1970, for the first time, he placed a tab of LSD on his tongue. He was twenty-five years old.

February: This Month in Sun History

A Look Back for Our 50^th Year of Publication

Although The Sun had already released three books of material from its pages, The Mysterious Life of the Heart, released in February 2009, was the first to be centered on a theme: romantic love.

Rachel J. Elliott on Twenty-Five Years with The Sun

Rachel Elliott started at The Sun as an editorial office assistant in 1997, processing the mail and fulfilling book orders. Now, as editorial associate and photo editor, there is not much of the magazine production process that Rachel isn’t involved in.

January: This Month in Sun History

A Look Back for Our 50^th Year of Publication

Sixteen pages, if you include the front and back covers. A twenty-five-cent cover price. Each issue sold by hand on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. . . . The office: the backseat of founder and editor Sy Safransky’s Nash Rambler. And a fifty-dollar loan to get the whole thing off the ground.

Magazine Delivery Delay

The November issue is late.

Please wait to request a replacement copy of the November issue until December 15.

Through the Years

Stephen Gaskin and Ina May Gaskin

In our November issue, Rupert Fike discusses The Farm in his poem “He Arrived in a Hollowed-Out Studebaker Lark.” From 1971 to 1983 The Farm existed as a spiritual commune, home to more than a thousand “voluntary peasants” on 1,750 acres in southern Tennessee. It continues today as a reorganized cooperative with members in charge of their own finances. The Farm was founded by Stephen Gaskin with the help of his wife Ina May Gaskin, both of whom are Sun contributors. We present links to content by and about Stephen and Ina May through the years.

October’s Most Popular Reads

Competing perspectives take center stage in this month’s most-read selections.

The Hope and Heartache of Parenting

This month’s archive selections explore the fraught connections between parents and children.

Submit to Readers Write on “Dating Apps”

Due November 1

Thumb tired from swiping right? From swiping left? Have you found true love, or at least had a memorable interaction, through an app on your cellphone? We’d love to read your true stories about dating apps — the good, the bad, and the ugly

Finding the Story

Elana Kupor on Pain and Identity

Elana Kupor is the author of “The Thistle Steps,” an essay featured in our October 2022 issue. Kupor has been hard of hearing since birth, and in her essay she interweaves her present-day experiences with scenes from her childhood. Sun Editorial Assistant Staci Kleinmaier recently spoke with Kupor about writing, identity, and disability.