News & Notes

September’s Most Popular Reads

This month’s most popular selections are united by common themes: violence and education.

Fertility, Parenthood, and “The Great Decline”

Children often evoke our strongest emotions. When we think about them — when and whether to have them, whether we can have them, whether we’ll have the freedom to make the choices we want — we confront our deepest fears and hopes.

Four Ways to Lose Yourself: August’s Most Popular Selections

This month’s most popular selections are all about losing yourself — or trying to — in unexpected ways.

How Do Our Convictions Change the World?

As social mores change and life as we know it continues to evolve, we wonder: How do personal convictions — whether ours or of those in power — shape society?

Our Summer Recommended Reading List

We hope you’ll enjoy these featured selections from the past twelve months, chosen by our readers and staff.

Award-Winning Writers

Congratulations to Maria Black and Jennifer Bowen Hicks on winning Pushcart Prizes, and congratulations also to other Sun contributors whose work has been recognized.

The Indiana Prison Writers Workshop

Thanks to reader support, we have sent The Sun free of charge to men and women behind bars for decades. We began sending the magazine to the Indiana Prison Writers Workshop after we received founder Debra Des Vignes’s letter to the editor mentioning her program teaching creative writing to inmates.

One Who Really Writes

Becky Mandelbaum on Imposter Syndrome and Shapeshifting Memories

Author Becky Mandelbaum discusses “Emotional Morons,” a short story featured in our July 2022 issue, touching on the story’s distinctive setting at an artificial lake in Kansas, the main character’s profound insecurities, and more.

Q&A about Readers Write

With Sun Associate Editor Derek Askey

Learn from The Sun’s Associate Editor Derek Askey how Readers Write topics are chosen and what he looks for in Readers Write submissions. He also looks ahead to our fiftieth anniversary next year and how we plan to celebrate it in Readers Write.

Two Writers, One Name

Sun readers who pay close attention to our contributors’ page may have noticed a recent coincidence: our October 2021 issue featured an essay by Michelle Herman, and the following month a poem by Michele Herman. The first name wasn’t a typo.