News & Notes

Bars, Practicing and Milk

Upcoming Readers Write Deadlines

There’s still time to submit to Readers Write on “Bars.” Be sure to get your entry to us by October 1—we’ve suggested a few potential prompts if you still need to get your creative juices flowing. And it’s never too early to start your first draft for an upcoming topic. . . .

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.

Here and Gone

Poetry in Our July Issue

“When he dies, my father turns into a small stone on the bed,” begins Michael Torres’s beautiful poem “Levi Strauss & Co.” All three poems in our July issue deal with figures who, like Torres’s father, have departed in some way, but whose presence remains. Yehoshua November’s “Exile for the Sake of Redemption” considers the movements of a God who sometimes feels out of reach. In “Parting Advice,” James Davis May recalls a friend’s enigmatic words, which have stayed with him since the friend’s passing.

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.

Shimmer

Read an Essay from Our Upcoming July Issue

James Hugo’s short essay “Shimmer” is a portrait of two small creatures whose size belies their strength. One is an Anna’s hummingbird, a “little knuckle of feather and muscle,” waiting in the rain to be fed. The other is the author’s son’s best friend, a boy whose spirit has survived a painful home life.

Inside the Whale

Adapted from Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story

Excerpted from Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story by Erica Stern. Available via Barrel House. Copyright © 2025. All rights reserved.

Memory and Music

Poetry in Our June Issue

At first glance the two poems in our June issue couldn’t seem more different. “My memory of you is a knife,” begins Jarod K. Anderson’s “Tending the Wound,” a short study of longing that’s as sharp as the image in its first line. Jared Harél’s playful “Ode to Middle School Band” captures an audience’s mix of trepidation and pride at a school concert. (Anyone who’s watched a group of kids perform will know the feeling.) Though the poems’ tones are quite different, at the heart of both are emotions many of us will recognize.

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.

A Meaningful World

Poetry in Our May Issue

The two poems in our May issue leave me with a lingering sense of a deep, meaningful world that is always at hand. Jarod K. Anderson’s “Goodbye Note” turns mementoes left on gravestones into a meditation on the return of all things to the earth. In Robert Cording’s “Black-Necked Stilt,” an unfamiliar bird presents an opportunity for new knowledge and keen gratitude. You can hear the authors read their work by clicking the Play buttons below.

On Wheels

Read an Essay from Our Upcoming September Issue

This essay will appear in It All Felt Impossible. Copyright © 2025. Reprinted by permission of Rose Metal Press.