I’ve logged more experience than most with simplicity and the complexity you discover inside simplicity, minimalism and asocial behavior, endurance and landscape.
Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.
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Samuel J Adams lives in Solano County, California, more than eight hundred miles from the nearest groundhog. His fiction has appeared in Ruminate, DIAGRAM, and Moon City Review.
Elizabeth Miki Brina’s debut memoir, Speak, Okinawa, is forthcoming in February 2021. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she loves the heat and humidity and riding her bicycle.
Grady Chambers is the author of the poetry collection North American Stadiums. His poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and American Poetry Review. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Finn Cohen is the associate editor at The Sun. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Melissa Febos is the author of the memoirs Whip Smart and Abandon Me. Her essay in this issue will appear in her forthcoming collection, Girlhood. After twenty years in New York City, she is acclimating to the Midwest, where she teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.
Tracy Frisch settled in rural Upstate New York in 2004, trading in a job to build a house, grow large gardens, and participate in the gift economy.
John Holman is the author of three fiction books, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, Mississippi Review, and Oxford American. He teaches writing at Georgia State University. You can follow him on Instagram: @jholman51.
Sharon Olds is a former poet laureate of New York State. She is the author of twelve poetry collections, including Arias, which was published in 2019, and her work has been widely anthologized. She teaches creative writing at New York University.
Christy Shake lives in a small college town in Maine and writes a blog about her son and his epilepsy, exploring topics from motherhood to social justice, at calvinsstory.com. She is working on a memoir.
Cameron Bloch has worked as an Associated Press photographer, writer, and photo editor. His photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and newspapers across the U.S. He lives in New York City.
Michael Galinsky is a filmmaker, photographer, and musician who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has been a contributor to The Sun for more than thirty years.
Poppy de Garmo started taking photos when she was sixteen, after her father built her a darkroom. She is studying for a master’s degree in the humanities and working on a book of portraits of spiritual masters. She lives in the Santa Cruz mountains, among the redwoods and a garden of zinnias.
Hiroto Hayashi is a student at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, South Dakota, where he studies English, writing, and outdoor education. He took this month’s cover photo in the pine and aspen woods of the Rocky Mountains near Gunnison, Colorado.
David Inscho lives in Bellingham, Washington. His photographs have appeared in Backpacker, Travel Oregon, and Adventures NW, but his most enduring achievement is the sycamore tree he planted in his front yard twenty years ago.
Matt Kollasch’s book A Worn Path: Pristina Photographs is a collection of photos and stories about the people of Pristina, Kosovo. He lives in Berlin and is learning to speak German.
Juan Laden has been shooting black-and-white film since the late 1960s. He lives in Lander, Wyoming.
Susan Lirakis is practicing aging gracefully. She lives in rural New Hampshire.
Andrew Mangum lives with his wife and children in Maryland. His work has been published in Léte, The Washington Post, and Baltimore’s City Paper. He credits his sense of determination to the hours he’s spent on his skateboard, falling down and getting up again.
Stephen Voss takes photographs that speak to our current time. His photographs are held in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Washingtonia Collection.
Whit Wales is a photographer who lives in Holden, Massachusetts.
Editor And Founder Sy Safransky
Senior Editor Andrew Snee
Art Director Robert Graham
Digital-Media Director David Mahaffey
Associate Editor Finn Cohen
Assistant Editors Derek Askey Nancy Holochwost
Editorial Associate & Photo Editor Rachel J. Elliott
Editorial Assistant Staci Kleinmaier
Proofreader Seth Mirsky
Editorial Intern Anna Gazmarian
Publisher Rob Bowers
Associate Publisher Krista Bremer
Director Of Publishing Operations Holly McKinney
Special Events & Outreach Manager Molly House
With Help From Manuscript Reading Dave Hart Paula Jolin Gillian Kendall Rebecca Lanning Hank Stephenson
Proofreading Erica Berkeley