The Sun Magazine The Sun Magazine, Independent, Reader-Supported Publishing https://www.thesunmagazine.org/rss/articles Home Is the Place In her essay “The Good End of Pleasant Street,” which appears in our June issue, Heather Lanier and her family move into an apartment that’s part dream, part unfortunate reality. Their new place is in a beautiful Vermont town and has affordable rent. However, it’s also got lead paint, loud neighbors, and proximity to the town’s heroin crisis. All of this leaves the author continually wondering whether she’s living at what local residents call the “good end” or the “bad end” of Pleasant Street.

]]> Thu, 04 Jun 2026 01:00:14 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28996-home-is-the-place http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28996 Standards of Care The reason Black women were used to develop the field of gynecology was because they were no more than property. They weren’t seen as people; they were just seen as things. The controlling of Black women’s bodies started with chattel slavery, but it continues today.

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:45 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-standards-of-care http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28985 606 - Wild - Pitts The Empty Room Inside Each of Us Crumb is always right, always the one telling the story, always the one who turns the drab, lonesome plains they call home into a world that’s dramatic and necessary.

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-the-empty-room-inside-each-of-us http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28992 606 - Pedersen - Wilkins Because I became allergic to chocolate when I was seventeen because a rash spread on my chest when I ate mole sauce at Sanborns; because acne populated my face every time I drank hot cocoa; because I believed it to be easy to give up something I loved

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-because-i-became-allergic-to-chocolate-when-i-was-seventeen http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28991 City Chickens I never thought // I’d end up like this, domesticated as a pet lamb, / with a mate who worries our hundred-year-old house // needs new everything, shingles to foundation.

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-city-chickens http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28990 606 - Estep - Luterman Formed Otherwise There’s a presumption that to raise a child with disabilities makes you brave. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t always a stellar mother, either. But I studied my daughter as if she were an ancient text to see what was beneath the chatter and the rage

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-formed-otherwise http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28989 606 - Epli - Bernstein The Feeding Some leeches have two jaws. Others have three. Some have teeth on their tongues. There are protective leeches who hover over their eggs, and leeches who carry their newborns in pouches like tiny kangaroos.

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-the-feeding http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28988 606 - Rios - Glatt The Good End of Pleasant Street When our landlords came by to introduce themselves, they stood beside a shelf of our books on how to avoid suffering: “Develop a mind that clings to nothing,” said the Buddhist Diamond Sutra; Be Here Now, read the spine of a Ram Dass book. Dan was a general contractor and wore a flat cap and a half grin. Or a sneer. I wasn’t sure which.

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-the-good-end-of-pleasant-street http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28987 606 - Easley - Lanier Our Fraying Hearts I have a sense of the drama people want to hear about, but most days our ER is filled with abdominal pain and vomiting—nothing like what you’re accustomed to seeing on TV.

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-our-fraying-hearts http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28986 606 - Taher - Reinbold Sunbeams

God and the Doctor we alike adore / But only when in danger, not before; / The danger o’er, both are alike requited, / God is forgotten, and the Doctor slighted.

John Owen

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-sunbeams http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28984 606 - Wild - Sunbeams A Thousand Words A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-a-thousand-words http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28983 606 - Brandao - A Thousand Words Correspondence Although it’s always difficult to read about a woman repressing a part of herself to hang on to a relationship, I greatly appreciated Moonshine Matthiessen’s essay “Waterfall” in the January 2026 issue. The piece is beautifully written, and Matthiessen is incredibly candid about her experiences. I admire her courage to voice her desires, her shame, and her struggles.

I, too, stayed longer than I should have in a past relationship, and I’ve often wondered about the mechanism of denial. How is it that, so often, we can’t or won’t recognize when remaining in a situation is bad for us?

Perhaps if there were more studies on denial, we would have answers as to why people stay in abusive relationships, how others justify their addictive behaviors, and why so many people in our country remain true to a president who continues to destroy us.

Name Withheld

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-correspondence http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28982 Contributors

Kris Chambas is a retired pediatric nurse practitioner and former pastry chef. She lives on a lake in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, and loves spending time with her grandchildren and their yellow Lab, Odie. She snapped our June cover photo on a humid morning in a cattle barn at the Wisconsin State Fair.

More ]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-contributors http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28981 606 - Stolow - TOC - Main Milk Pumped for an infant, spilled at the dinner table, used as a tear gas antidote

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-milk http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28993 606 - Wild - Milk The Ties That Bind Our relationships with family members are often crucial to who we are, for better or worse, and the poems in our May issue explore two sides of that dynamic. In “Boxer’s Fracture,” by Jackleen Holton, a mother’s death brings up strong emotions from the speaker’s painful childhood. In Meghan Daniels’s “Separation” the stresses and challenges of parenting, while exhausting, also form a solid center in the speaker’s life during an uncertain time.

]]> Mon, 18 May 2026 16:05:35 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28980-the-ties-that-bind http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28980 Become A Friend Of <em>The Sun</em> The Sun has always belonged to its readers. It exists because people believe in quiet conversation, in close listening, in honest storytelling. It exists because readers like you decide that this endeavor is worth sustaining.

]]> Fri, 15 May 2026 14:17:36 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-become-a-friend-of-the-sun http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28994 Become A Friend Of <em>The Sun</em> The Sun has always belonged to its readers. It exists because people believe in quiet conversation, in close listening, in honest storytelling. It exists because readers like you decide that this endeavor is worth sustaining.

]]> Fri, 15 May 2026 14:17:36 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28979-become-a-friend-of-the-sun http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28979 Contenders In our April interview [“Lesson Plan”] Pranav Jani, an English professor at The Ohio State University, discusses the current state of activism on college campuses. With the Trump administration bullying schools into cracking down on political speech, are our institutions of higher learning still a free marketplace of ideas?

]]> Thu, 14 May 2026 01:00:14 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28978-contenders http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28978 Ancestors Some African harmonic traditions and histories may have been redacted, but they’re not lost. In New Orleans, specifically among the tribes, they made sure to hold on to those histories and the skeleton keys of those expressions.

]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:45 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-ancestors http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28967 605 - Campbell - Cohen Back Cover Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-back-cover http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28976 605 - Brooks - Back Cover Practicing Taking piano lessons, learning to speak Russian, seeking enlightenment

]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-practicing http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28975 605 - Anzorena - Practicing Separation There is a dead snake on the cracked road. My son says it’s not a dead snake. He says the snake has just shed its skin and left it there.

]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-separation http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28974 Boxer’s Fracture My mother once put her fist / through drywall, nothing fractured // but that already-broken home, / a little more of her spirit and ours.

]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-boxers-fracture http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28973 Rise I wasn’t about to tell Simon what happened. Buddy Sikes was one of the popular kids. Simon wouldn’t understand. Not because of his differences, but because he was still at the age where a clear line separated right from wrong.

]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-rise http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28972 605 - Obrien - Falkowski Architecture in Music My twenty-year career as a professional cellist has enabled me to bring an insider’s understanding of music to the visual exploration of instruments.

]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-architecture-in-music http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28971 605 - Brooks - 01 Struck I often wonder if there was something I missed, if the thunder and lightning said something I couldn’t understand.

]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-struck http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28970 605 - Perry - Davis My Bowstring Heart On the field I was all animal instinct and brute force—a bruiser, a bone breaker. Every tackle was a rebuke against a life where fathers die. When I played rugby, I wasn’t a broke, lost little girl. I wasn’t a struggling amateur writer. I had goals. I was a winner. I was MVP. I was someone.

]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-my-bowstring-heart http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28969 605 - Yeomans - Whitmore Home Invasions Still, I hadn’t counted on real, live rats. “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard them before,” said Rat Guy #1, as he came to be known. “From the looks of it they’ve been here a while.”

]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-home-invasions http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28968 605 - McMains - Myka A Thousand Words A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-a-thousand-words http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28965 605 - Gurfinkel - A Thousand Words Correspondence I’ve enjoyed The Sun for years, and I devour each issue cover to cover. In the February 2026 issue, two articles really stood out for me. The first was “The Fourth Estate,” Finn Cohen’s interview with Sheila Coronel. Coronel offers reassurance that fact-based investigative reporting is still being taught in journalism programs, and that brave souls continue to pursue it despite the risks. She also validated my feelings about the importance of commentators and comedians like Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel.

The second was “Sleeping Children,” Kevin Peraino’s essay on what he witnessed in Gaza as a reporter for Newsweek in the early aughts. His chronology of Palestinian politics gave me a new perspective on the events that have led to Israel’s diabolical erasure (with US weapons and support) of a people and their homeland. I used to hope for a “two-state solution,” which I thought was fair and just, but as I read Peraino’s essay, I didn’t feel as if he was pushing me to take sides—rather, he was helping me understand the different factions’ strategies to consolidate power, and how families became the collateral damage.

Pat Milone
Redland, Florida

]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-correspondence http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28964