Staff

After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh and toiling away in a dreadful little cubicle for years, Derek left to earn his master’s at Colorado State University. He started at The Sun in 2014 and lives with his wife, Madelaine, and his son, Monty, in Durham, North Carolina. He’s currently in that embarrassing stage of life where he’s revisiting things he liked in middle school and finding out he still likes them.

Rob started reading The Sun in 1996 as an antidote to his professional life in finance and commerce. He later left his career to start an organic farm and spent nine years toiling in the North Carolina dirt—an agrarian midlife crisis of sorts. Today he and his wife, Cheri, and daughter, Téa, live in Cedar Grove, North Carolina.

Finn grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and has a music degree from Duke University. He has been an editor and writer at The New York Times, Apple News, and The Moscow Times.

Rachel has worked at The Sun since November 1997 and has contributed photographs and interviews to its pages. She enjoys playing volleyball and cornhole with family and friends in Carrboro, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband, Seth, and her dog, Kodi.

Andrew joined The Sun in 2022 after years of working in live performance. When he’s not feeding the cat or ignoring his check-engine light, he moonlights as a comedian. Performing for seven years in the area, Andrew has appeared in venues and comedy festivals all over the state and beyond. He enjoys reading, playing guitar for the cat, and telling people of his plans—big and small—that, due to an irresistible urge to nap, he’ll certainly not follow through on.

Robert joined The Sun in 2001, having previously worked as a graphic designer for a hospital, a mail-order bicycle catalog, and a plastic-skeleton manufacturer. His favorite pastimes are not meditating, not practicing guitar scales, and inventing new excuses for why he shouldn’t bike to work. He lives with his two daughters and two cats in Carrboro, North Carolina.

The daughter of an English teacher and a craftsman, Nancy grew up amid the rolling farmlands of northern New Jersey. She received her BA from Yale University and worked for ten years to end homelessness before coming to The Sun in 2017. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband, her cat, and a yard full of fireflies.

Molly joined the Sun staff in 2008. A native North Carolinian, she loves Bojangles’ biscuits, Cheerwine, and the Carolina Tar Heels. She is married to a florist, who proposed at The Sun’s fortieth-anniversary celebration. They share a house in the woods with their son, Hank, daughter, Catherine, and Buddy the Cat.

David has been coaxing The Sun into the twenty-first century since 2010. David has degrees in creative writing and publishing. David has strong feelings about science fiction, liminal states, and serial commas. David lives with one partner, two cats, and two dogs in Durham, North Carolina.

Holly has a deep love of music and frequently forces her girlfriends to drink wine with her and cry over sad songs for hours on end. She spends her mornings taking long runs in the woods. She lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, with her husband, Brockton, who writes comic books and screenplays; their daughter, May, who sews and draws; and too many animals to count.

Seth began doing editorial work for The Sun in 1993. A graduate of Wesleyan University and Harvard Divinity School, he has published articles on men, feminism, and contemporary religion, and is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Seth plays several musical instruments and lives on two Maine islands—one accessible by bridge, the other not.

Chrystal joined The Sun in November 2021 after relocating from New York. She likes to cook, bake, and torture her family with card- and board-game tournaments. (They love it, though.) She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her toddler son, Lonnie IV, who runs, jumps, and makes a mess; she also has a grown son, Xavier, who plays basketball and writes in his spare time.

Sy was editor of his junior-high newspaper, his high-school newspaper, and his college newspaper. (Guess where this is heading.) He earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, then worked as a newspaper reporter until he discovered that the real news is what connects us. Miraculously, the magazine he founded in 1974 survives to this day.

Andrew has been at The Sun since 1994. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was better at editing other students’ short stories than he was at writing his own. He and his wife, Julie, have two sons and live in Raleigh, North Carolina.