The Sun is an independent, ad-free magazine that for more than forty years has used words and photographs to evoke the splendor and heartache of being human. Each monthly issue celebrates life, but not in a way that ignores its complexity. The personal essays, short stories, interviews, poetry, and photographs that appear in The Sun’s pages explore the challenges we face and the moments when we rise to meet them.
On her debut album ALONE AT LAST, Tasha celebrates the radical political act of being exquisitely gentle with yourself. For years, the Chicago songwriter has dreamed hard of a better world — she’s worked with the local racial justice organization BLACK YOUTH PROJECT 100 and has been on the front lines at protests around the […]
Columbia, Missouri trio The Hooten Hallers are a high-energy blues-rock band known for hard-traveling and wild live shows, with a seemingly endless tour schedule. The myriad of influences in their music incorporates elements of rhythm & blues, rock’n’roll, honky tonk, jazz, soul, and punk with a thematic penchant for the strange and the unexplained. Their […]
Billy Dean Thomas (they/them), AKA “The Queer B.I.G” is a Hip-hop recording artist and producer born and raised in Harlem, but currently residing in Boston. Billy Dean challenges the music industry with quick-witted punchlines, that highlight intersectional feminism, social justice, and growing up in a gentrified city. Recently. named one of NPR’s 2020 Slingshot Artists […]
Donika Kelly is the author of the chapbook AVIARIUM (five hundred places) and the full-length collections THE RENUNCIATIONS (Graywolf 2021) and BESTIARY (Graywolf). BESTIARY is the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The collection was also long-listed for the National Book Award […]
Gina Nutt is the author of the essay collection Night Rooms (Two Dollar Radio) and the poetry collection Wilderness Champion (Gold Wake Press). She earned her MFA from Syracuse University. Her writing has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, Joyland, Ninth Letter, and other publications.
Nat Baldwin is a bassist, improviser, and songwriter living in Portland, ME. His most recent solo works have been released as a series: AUTONOMIA I: Body Without Organs, AUTONOMIA II: Recombinations, and AUTONOMIA III: Endnotes. After releasing numerous solo albums of songs, the new works explore the intersections of free improvisation, new music, and noise. […]
Amrita “Ami” Kaur Dang is a South Asian-American, Sikh composer, music producer, vocalist, and sitarist from Baltimore. Combining ideas from South Asian music with synthesizers, MIDI controllers, lighting design, and gestural movement, her work invites the audience to reframe their assumptions about the colonial history of music, the arts, technology, and performance and its place […]
Lake Villain is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Iowa City, and has been creating music in bands and under various solo pseudonyms for the past two decades. His current project is the culmination of a lifetime of passion for music and artistic discovery. It takes the form of “electronic listening music,” composed of synthetically sculpted […]
Ramona and the Sometimes is a Des Moines, IA based five-piece pop rock band led by multimedia artist Ramona Muse Lambert. The group relies on accessible hooks and pop song structures with emotionally raw, often positive and uplifting lyrical content, with an emphasis on encouraging creativity and the self confidence to create art. With Muse […]