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Incarceration
Poetry
This Call Is from an Inmate at a Federal Prison
They say you eventually get desperate / enough to call a stranger, someone / who’s added her number to a database / for the incarcerated, someone who’s / even more alone than you.
November 2024
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
And These Too Are Defensive Wounds
I’d thought the transcripts would help me write a letter to the parole board, but when I opened them, I saw a section of my own testimony at Maynard’s trial, and that was that. My head filled with hissing static; my heart raced.
September 2024
Readers Write
Uniforms
For a job at Burger King, a prison in North Carolina, a girls’ school in Iran
June 2024
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Surrogates
Twin had lived inside a concrete kennel for four of her five years. Wylie, who also lived inside a concrete box, had gone to prison as a teen. He’d cared for Twin since she was a puppy, which meant he had likely opened her kennel to feed her and let her out thousands of times.
April 2024
Readers Write
Gratitude
A second chance at work, a shared meal in the classroom, a helpful stranger at a rest stop
December 2023
The Dog-Eared Page
Selected Poems
For two years The Sun was a lighthouse that guided me through rough, dark waters: Every line of mine that Sy [Safransky] published penetrated a little more of the fog called imprisonment. Every poem revealed my wrecked spirit dashed against the reef. Not only had Sy loved them, but Sun readers sent letters of appreciation, which Sy printed in the magazine. I’d never been complimented for anything, much less a literary contribution. My life had some hope in it now.
November 2023Anniversary
This Month In Sun History
Our 50th Year Of Publication
On a quiet Friday afternoon in the summer of 2007, the phone rang in The Sun’s office. It was someone calling on behalf of a man on death row to inform us of a glaring error in an upcoming issue.
September 2023Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
A Face In Judgment
A young man stands at the lectern: nineteen years old, athletic, thick black hair down to his shoulders. I’ll call him Marco. Today my job is to decide whether to send him to prison.
September 2023
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