News & Notes

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.

Roots and Rhizomes

Read an Essay from an Upcoming Issue

This essay will appear in What My Father and I Don’t Talk About, edited by Michele Filgate. Copyright © 2025 by Michele Filgate. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, NY.

Wrestling with Faith and Fear

Selections from the Archive

Our spiritual lives can shape us in ways both profound and surprising—whether we have faith or not. The essays and stories in this month’s issue invite readers to examine their own convictions about faith, fear, and evil. Because they resist easy explanations, these themes have recurred throughout The Sun’s history, revealing how personal conviction emerges not from abstract theological debates but from lived experience: a frightening airplane flight, a child’s struggle with religious indoctrination, a chess game between grandfather and grandson.

These selections demonstrate that questions of belief are rarely settled once and for all, but instead accompany us throughout our lives, evolving as we do.

Paying Attention

Poetry in Our April Issue

In Stephen Knauth’s “My Favorite Bird,” a “drab” little visitor to the author’s backyard prompts a thoughtful and empathetic contemplation of who this feathered creature is. The poem is a reminder that the world around us deserves our attention, an idea that is shared by the other poems in our April issue. Leath Tonino tells the story of a day, one moment at a time—from fires and floods to a man forgetting to plug in his slow cooker—in “Shift.” In Richard Chess’s “The Loneliest Monk Listens,” an unidentified presence counsels the speaker to breathe, remember, and listen. We invite you to do the same.

The Highs and Lows of Getting High

Selections from the Archive

In The Sun’s archives there are dozens of selections about the ways people find meaning in nature. We’ve gathered a few favorites below that we hope you’ll enjoy.