The Sun Magazine

17/07/2024

Kate Osterloh creates a “New Life” following the curve of a river and a crease in her palm.

Photo credit: Ryan Malizio

Read her story below:
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-new-life

16/07/2024

A Thousand Words is a page for photographs that tell a story all on their own. —Ed.

Photo credit: Wayne Klaw

Click below to request a free trial—print issue and digital access included.
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-a-thousand-words

11/07/2024

Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann is Kalaaleq (Inuk from Greenland), Danish, a microbiologist and a public debater. Using what she describes as the “lens of microbiology,” she attempts to understand the complex relationships—microbial, cultural, and historical—between Inuit and the Arctic environment. Her research on the harvesting, preparation, sharing, and consumption of traditional fermented foods radically questions Western beliefs about diet and sustainability.

Click below to explore Greenland’s foodways with her:

The terrible emotions I was filled with are the truth of what it means to be alive. When you live, something else dies. Even if you only eat plants, animals die for you to be able to eat. We do not…

01/07/2024

“The terrible emotions I was filled with are the truth of what it means to be alive. When you live, something else dies. Even if you only eat plants, animals die for you to be able to eat. We do not talk about that often enough.”

Whether sun-warmed Pepsi or fermented kiviaq, this month’s issue explores emotions behind food systems—disgust, desperation, reverence, and distrust.

Cover photo: Carsten Egevang

Click below to read the July 2024 issue:
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/publications/3/editions/2324

29/06/2024

An optometrist offers the poet 20/20 vision via perspective shift. Click below to view aging through Hayden Saunier’s lenses:

I ask the youngish eye doctor why my eyes itch / and burn and why new floaty bits / of paramecium-shaped debris swim // through my view each day

28/06/2024

Join Becky Mandelbaum on Mount Rainier for a fresh perspective on love after heartbreak.

Click below to take a hike:
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28440-gift-shops-of-the-american-wild

Photo credit: Gary Morgret

27/06/2024

Editor and Publisher Rob Bowers describes what friendship from a publication can feel like, and how you can befriend The Sun. Click below to read his letter to you.
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/become-a-friend-of-the-sun-issue-582

21/06/2024

Six tear-jerkers for Cancer season, previously published in The Sun magazine.

Photo credits:
Lynne Jaeger Weinstein
Siri Myhrom
Wendy Stone
Gloria Baker Feinstein
Raffaele Montepaone
Lloyd Wolf

18/06/2024

John Vurro braces against the grief storm of parenting his disabled boy in “Guardians.”

Click below to read his essay:
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/582/guardians

15/06/2024

A Thousand Words is a page for photographs that tell a story all on their own.—Ed.

Photo credit: Jolene Hanson

Click below to view more featured photography:
https://thesunmagazine.org/sections/photography

10/06/2024

Join Becky Mandelbaum on Mount Rainier for a fresh perspective on love after heartbreak. Click below to take a hike:
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/582/gift-shops-of-the-american-wild

Photo credit: Gary Morgret

03/06/2024

“It’s strange that we learn in school about the sedimentary layers of mountains and how to draw a particular curve but nothing about the realities of the body and respect for caregivers.”

This month’s issue expands our understanding of caretaking: for ourselves and for society at large; who requires it and who is required to provide it; and how everything from expectations to economics shapes the experience.

Click below to read the June 2024 issue:
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/582

Cover photo: Andy Hann

27/05/2024

Stacy Boe Miller shares her recovery from divorce—both marital and religious.

Click below to read her story:
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/581/sex-in-the-in-between

Photo credit: Anita Sagastegui

26/05/2024

Why do we laugh?

Comedian Kliph Nesteroff says this is an unanswerable question. If that sounds humorless, click on the link below for an interview that gives comedy some context:
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/581/two-guys-walk-into-a-bar

Photo credit: Beth McLeod

20/05/2024

Four friendly photos, previously published in The Sun. Greetings, Gemini season!

Photo credits:
Karen Morgan
Peter Olude
Thomas Clark
Heidi Hart

13/05/2024

Refined, bitter, hot, or sappy—this month’s Readers Write flavors our emotional and physical experiences.

Click below for a "Taste”:

Family recipes, mystery street foods, thrift-shop outfits

12/05/2024

“I am warming to the idea of raising chickens again. Just a few. It’s easier to support others when you, yourself, feel held.”

There are spring chickens, then there is spring—and chickens. Here are three photos of the same sentiment.

Photo credits:
Brigitte Carnochan
Nikolai Fox
Caroline Kraus

09/05/2024

Cornell Watson is a photographer who lives in Durham, North Carolina. His work has been published in The New York Times and The Washington Post, including his photography project “Behind the Mask,” about the Black experience in the United States.

06/05/2024

Six images from The Sun that feel like a spring fling.

Photo credits:
Cole Thompson
Karen Morgan
Maciej Miller
Logan Mock-Bunting
Douglas Beasley
Richard Whittaker

01/05/2024

“On the first day of high school I climbed the stone statue of a jaguar that guarded the building’s entrance and rode it like a bronco. I bucked on its back and waved my arm over my head, welcoming the other students. Some smiled, but most looked confused. The adults looked panicked. I was suspended and sent home.”

This month’s issue illuminates humor’s darker side.

Click below to read the May 2024 issue:
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/581

Cover photo: Lisa Whiteman

20/04/2024

Unmoderated viewer comments bring perspective to a fictionalized YouTube nature video.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe:
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/580/the-peaceful-circle-year-in-a-wild-marsh

Photo credit: Marilyn Lemmon

17/04/2024

Wendy Liu, programmer turned author, is disenchanted with digital progress—she no longer believes it is driven by good intentions, citing economic disparities in the tech industry and a veneer of altruism.

Join her for a sobering stroll around San Francisco:
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/580/down-in-the-valley

Photo credit: Chandler Abraham

15/04/2024

“Surrogates” is a story of harboring—whether for self-preservation or the preservation of another.

Click the link below to read Jennifer Bowen’s essay:
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/580/surrogates

Photo credit: Sol Anzorena

09/04/2024

Reuben Radding moved to New York City in 1988 and began walking the streets. The camera came later, offering a new way to discover himself: by looking at everybody else. (reubenradding.com)

03/04/2024

“Pets floated away from their owners after Hurricane Katrina, leaving the streets awash in orphaned animals. In response a shelter sprang up inside Louisiana’s Dixon Correctional Institute. . . . That’s how, long after the disaster, eleven incarcerated men became caretakers to ninety animals, and one of those animals became mine.”

This month’s issue considers what happens when spaces—whether marshland, tech incubator, or your garage—are disrupted.

Cover photo: Gloria Baker Feinstein

Click below to read the April 2024 issue:
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/580

29/03/2024

Find spring in full bloom(ers) via Robert P. Cooke’s poem, “Mountain Flowers.”

Click below for his take on flora:
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/579/mountain-flowers

26/03/2024

Inspired by this month’s A Thousand Words: here are five additional photos that feel satisfying in their symmetry.

Cole Thompson (Photos 1, 2)
Johnny Kerr
Cynthia Wood
Mike Szpot

23/03/2024

"When I imagine a book about my life, I picture fifty pages dedicated to hypochondria, forty on unrequited crushes, ten on attempts to analyze my wife’s tone of voice, a hundred on internally relitigating the worst moments of my life, and at least a hundred more on catastrophizing."

Excerpt from “Don’t Think Too Hard about Avocados,” by Hank Stephenson.

Read the rest of his musings here:
https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/579/dont-think-too-hard-about-avocados

22/03/2024

"P**n is violent. P**n is art. P**n is disgusting. P**n is sexual expression."

In this month’s interview professor and researcher Clarissa Smith says we often talk about p**n as if it were singular, in a way that we don’t extend to other media. “I don’t want to fall into the trap of arguing either you’re for p**n or you’re against it,” she says. “There’s so much that we miss when we don’t take p**nography seriously as a media form.”

Click the (safe-for-work) link in our bio to read about p**nography’s influence on societies, youth, and patriarchy: https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/579/is-this-desire

21/03/2024

A Thousand Words is a page for photographs that tell a story all on their own.

Photo credit: Laurie Minor