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Anniversary
On The Sun’s Fiftieth Anniversary
A Letter From The Publisher
The Sun has, in the words of our founder and editor Sy Safransky, endeavored to “look at a sad, confused world and see it as holy.” Do that for fifty years, month after month, year after year, and it’s no wonder people want to keep reading.
January 2023This Month In Sun History
Our 50th Year Of Publication
Sixteen pages, if you include the front and back covers. A twenty-five-cent cover price. Each issue sold by hand on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. . . . The office: the backseat of founder and editor Sy Safransky’s Nash Rambler. And a fifty-dollar loan to get the whole thing off the ground.
January 2023
The Sun’s 500th Issue
This is the 500th issue of The Sun. In recognition of the milestone, we’ve devoted more than half our pages to a special section titled “One Nation, Indivisible,” which features excerpts from the magazine going back to the first issue in 1974. Rather than celebrate the magazine’s history, we wanted to address the current political moment by giving readers perspective on the past and courage to face the present.
August 2017Countless Labors
Our subscriber list has grown far beyond what it was then; we now have seventy-two thousand names on it. The staff is larger. The look of the magazine may have changed, but its content hasn’t traveled far from its roots. It continues to explore those big, unwieldy themes, offering glimpses of the mysterious and maddening and magnificent experiences that connect us.
January 2014Beginnings, Blunders, & Eleventh-Hour Rescues
The illustration that is now part of our logo appears for the first time on the cover of issue 9, which came out in June 1975. The artist, Tom Cleveland, took inspiration from a face on a tarot card and added a monocle for a whimsical touch. The back cover of the issue features a photo of a tree and a quote by Richard Brautigan: “I wonder whether what we are publishing now is worth cutting down trees to make paper for the stuff.”
January 2014A Brief History Of The Sun
The first issue of The Sun came out in January 1974. The war in Vietnam was winding down, and Richard M. Nixon would soon resign the presidency. It was also the height of the energy crisis. The OPEC oil cartel had raised prices, resulting in lines at gas stations and debates about reducing dependence on Middle Eastern oil. So when Sy Safransky and coeditor Mike Mathers were deciding on a topic for the first issue of their new magazine, they chose “Energy.”
January 2004
The Sun Turns Thirty
An Unlikely Story
Step into any coffeehouse in any college town across the country, and you’ll find a couple of small, independent publications stacked by the door. . . . They publish a few issues and then disappear, or, rarely, last a year or two before becoming just a memory in the minds of a handful of locals. Now try to imagine that, thirty years from now, one of those odd little publications will still exist. Even more improbable: imagine that it will have found tens of thousands of readers all around the country.
January 2004
Come Rain Or Come Shine
Twenty-Five Years Of The Sun
This month marks The Sun’s twenty-fifth anniversary. As the deadline for the January issue approached — and passed — we were still debating how to commemorate the occasion in print. We didn’t want to waste space on self-congratulation, but we also didn’t think we should let the moment pass unnoticed. At the eleventh hour, we came up with an idea: we would invite longtime contributors and current and former staff members to send us their thoughts, recollections, and anecdotes about The Sun. Maybe we would get enough to fill a few pages. What we got was enough to fill the entire magazine.
January 1999A Prayer
This is the 250th issue of The Sun. Given the life expectancy of most small journals, I’d like to offer a prayer of thanks. But on which knee? To which God? I’ve always been reluctant to identify myself with any spiritual path. I don’t even like to use the word spiritual, because it divides the world into what is and what isn’t.
October 1996On Our Fifteenth Anniversary
Someone asked me recently how I raised the money — or, as he put it, the venture capital — to start The Sun. I told him it was easy: I borrowed fifty dollars from a friend.
January 1989
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