News & Notes

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.

Mother’s Day 2022

For Mother’s Day we are sharing letters from our readers about the joys and hardships of mothers and motherhood. We hope they capture some of the ways maternal relationships — or the lack thereof — can challenge or fulfill us.

An Update Regarding Customer Service

As we move to a new customer service platform, some web-based tools will be unavailable. If you’d like to be notified when these features are once again active, please follow the link in the article.

Friends of The Sun

Thank You for Making Our Work Possible

Why do I choose to donate to The Sun? For the same reason I donate to the symphony, and the botanical gardens, and the art museum. Because the world would be diminished if you were no longer part of it.

— Brett Lewis

More Chris Bursk poems

The poems that appear in our tribute to Chris Bursk are just a small sample of the fifty-plus poems that have been published The Sun. We hope you will enjoy a few more.