Issue 570 | The Sun Magazine

June 2023

Readers Write

Pain

Breaking a leg, giving birth, suffering for beauty

By Our Readers
The Dog-Eared Page

Some Thoughts On Mercy

When we have mercy, deep and abiding change might happen.

By Ross Gay
Quotations

Sunbeams

I’m still learning how dogged people can be in denial, even when their freedom or their lives are at stake.

Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

The Sun Interview

Don’t Panic

Rebecca Priestley On Finding Hope Amid The Climate Crisis

I’m not talking about burning the system down. . . . I simply think that the things we can do to respond to climate change will also make the world a better place for most people.

By Dash Lewis
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Observations On Ice

We have been repeatedly warned about the dangers posed by calving ice. Yet I still hope to see it: a spectacle of devastation. Reveal yourself to me, I demand. The glacier answers with silence.

By Synne Borgen
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Care Warning

Take care of yourself during this essay, whatever that means for you. Perhaps you need to drink a lot of water or unwrap a snack (quietly please!) or play Angry Birds on your phone — whatever works to tamp down your discomfort.

By Brenda Miller
Fiction

Shock Value

In general my job was predicated on my ability to suppress rage. I was an itinerant instructor, an adjunct whose career depended on good reviews from my co-instructor.

By Chaya Bhuvaneswar
Photography

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Photograph By Clemens Kalischer
Poetry

Curve-Billed Thrasher

The curve-billed thrasher digs the small purple potatoes / from the raised garden beds and ruins them. / He sets them back into the hollows in which they grew, / each speared neatly once through the heart.

By Chera Hammons