News & Notes

Listen to Poems from Our March Issue

Listen to the authors read the two transporting poems featured in our March issue. These vivid poems describe escapes of two very different kinds.

A Web-Exclusive Poem from Cameron Barnett’s New Collection

Murmur: “Grandpa’s Gavel”

We are celebrating the release of Cameron Barnett’s second book of poetry, Murmur, out today from Autumn House Press, with an exclusive online publication of “Grandpa’s Gavel.” Cameron’s new poetry collection considers the question of how we become who we are.

The Beast in Your Head

Read an Essay from an Upcoming Issue

I confess that I had never listened to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” all the way through until I read “The Beast in Your Head,” but that didn’t keep me from being drawn into Cynthia Marie Hoffman’s reflection on how the song informed her experience as a teenager with undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder. We’ve scheduled this essay for an upcoming issue of the magazine, but we’re sharing it early online in celebration of Cynthia’s new memoir in prose poems, Exploding Head, published this month by Persea Books.

The Challenges—and Joys—of Pregnancy

Selections from the Archive

Lucy Tan’s “Falling Action in Hoboken,” from our February issue, is the story of a young woman who begins dating a man she meets at a bar, then unexpectedly finds herself pregnant. The narrator describes her hesitations about carrying the pregnancy to term: “I think about the word womb a lot, about how it sounds like a cross between wound and tomb. I don’t want to be a mother. I am not qualified to be a mother.” This month’s archive selections explore the challenges—and joys—women may face when discovering they’re pregnant.

Listen to Poems from Our February Issue

Listen to the recordings of the three poems featured in our February issue. Each poem touches on a “what if”: an uncertain or changeable moment when a different future is possible.

Nature and Nurture

Selections from the Archive

Our January 2024 issue looks at how our environments and circumstances shape us and how we are shaping our environment. Collectively the voices in the issue grapple with not only the idea of nature versus nurture, but also with how we can nurture nature. These are questions that Sun contributors have contemplated for years, and I’ve pulled a few of my favorites from our archive.

More from La Diáspora

In the January 2024 issue of The Sun Hank Baker’s photo essay, “La Diáspora,” recounts his time living in the Costa Chica, a coastal region in Mexico that is home to the greatest number of Black Mexicans in the country. Here are additional photos that Hank shared of the people he met during his time there.

Listen to Poems from Our January Issue

Listen to the recordings of the three poems featured in our January issue. Each one contains an image that stops me in my tracks: a motionless panther; a dark mine shaft; the turn of a lock.

Sy Safransky on Writing and The Sun

Selections from the Archive

In our December 2023 issue we included a letter from our founder, Sy Safransky, who is stepping down after fifty years at the helm of The Sun. Presenting readers with a representative collection from his long tenure at the magazine is impossible. Any attempt would inevitably obscure more about his body of work than it reveals. Instead we’ve chosen to share some of Sy’s pieces about writing—and about The Sun.

Listen to Poems about Departures

We asked the poets in this month’s special poetry section to read their poems about leaving and letting go.