A fifth-grade bully, a blossoming romance, a late-night crash
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Children often evoke our strongest emotions. When we think about them — when and whether to have them, whether we can have them, whether we’ll have the freedom to make the choices we want — we confront our deepest fears and hopes.
This month’s most popular selections are all about losing yourself — or trying to — in unexpected ways.
As social mores change and life as we know it continues to evolve, we wonder: How do personal convictions — whether ours or of those in power — shape society?
We hope you’ll enjoy these featured selections from the past twelve months, chosen by our readers and staff.
Congratulations to Maria Black and Jennifer Bowen Hicks on winning Pushcart Prizes, and congratulations also to other Sun contributors whose work has been recognized.
Thanks to reader support, we have sent The Sun free of charge to men and women behind bars for decades. We began sending the magazine to the Indiana Prison Writers Workshop after we received founder Debra Des Vignes’s letter to the editor mentioning her program teaching creative writing to inmates.
Author Becky Mandelbaum discusses “Emotional Morons,” a short story featured in our July 2022 issue, touching on the story’s distinctive setting at an artificial lake in Kansas, the main character’s profound insecurities, and more.
Learn from The Sun’s Associate Editor Derek Askey how Readers Write topics are chosen and what he looks for in Readers Write submissions. He also looks ahead to our fiftieth anniversary next year and how we plan to celebrate it in Readers Write.
Sun readers who pay close attention to our contributors’ page may have noticed a recent coincidence: our October 2021 issue featured an essay by Michelle Herman, and the following month a poem by Michele Herman. The first name wasn’t a typo.
For Mother’s Day we are sharing letters from our readers about the joys and hardships of mothers and motherhood. We hope they capture some of the ways maternal relationships — or the lack thereof — can challenge or fulfill us.