Into the Fire: The Sun Magazine Celebrates Personal Writing

The Sun Magazine

May 21-23, 2010

To write about ourselves in a way that touches others and reminds them of our fundamental connectedness we must be willing to take a leap—with all our passion, fear, and longing— into the fire. And that fire is not just a metaphor. It’s as real as our own mysterious existence; as real as a painful moment that has broken, and maybe opened, our hearts.

For 36 years The Sun has published the kind of brave, revealing writing that lives up to the magazine’s motto, a line from concentration-camp survivor Viktor Frankl: “What is to give light must endure burning.” We invite you to join Sun readers, authors, and staff—including editor and publisher Sy Safransky—for a weekend of investigating our lives through the written word. The Sun will come to life in a retreat that mirrors the magazine’s format. We’ll discuss essays, fiction, and poems with their authors, who will lead exercises geared to bring forth similar elements in your own writing. Readers Write-style writing sessions will help get your pen moving. (You don’t have to be a writer to attend. Our aim is simply to create a space in which people can tell their stories from the heart.) The weekend will conclude with Sy Safransky reading from his Notebook and all of us sharing our favorite quotations at a Sunbeams open mic.

Of course, the best part of a Sun gathering is getting to meet everyone: staff, writers, and other people who love the magazine and share its compassionate, unflinching view of the world.

For a complete program and a list of materials to bring (or to order a free-trial issue of the magazine), visit www.thesunmagazine.org. As a large enrollment is expected we recommend registering soon.

Rowe is dedicating this workshop to the gifted poet and essayist Genie Zeiger, who first imagined The Sun coming to Rowe and taught at every Sun workshop. She died December 24, 2009.

Click to read sample writings by:
Alison Luterman
Genie Zeiger
Sparrow
Doug Crandell
Gillian Kendall

Sy Safransky is editor and publisher of The Sun.

Doug Crandell is the author of three novels: The Flawless Skin of Ugly People, Hairdos of the Mildly Depressed, and the forthcoming The Peculiar Boars of Malloy. He has also published two memoirs, Pig Boy’s Wicked Bird, and The All-American Industrial Motel, which detail his family’s struggles with mental illness and addiction. His latest nonfiction narrative, Fear Came to Town, is his first foray into true crime. Doug lives on a small farm outside of Atlanta, where he and his wife host literary retreats.

Gillian Kendall is a freelance writer, a reporter who covers Victorian Parliament in Australia, and a manuscript reader for The Sun. A high-school dropout with a Ph.D. and the only American in her British family, Gillian has lived a dual life. As a travel writer, she gets to go around the world almost for free. This chatterbox recently undertook a five-day silent retreat—and liked it. She is editor of the anthology Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing, author of Mr. Ding’s Chicken Feet, and co-author, with Mark O’Brien, of his autobiography How I Became a Human Being.

Alison Luterman is a poet, essayist, playwright, and theatrical improviser who lives in Oakland, California. She teaches creative writing through the Writing Salon and California Poets in the Schools. She has two books of poems, The Largest Possible Life and See How We Almost Fly.

Sparrow lives in Teaneck, New Jersey, with his wife, Violet Snow; a chiropractor; and a Steinway piano. Three of his op-ed pieces have been published in the New York Times, and Soft Skull Press has put out three of his books. Sparrow works as a gossip columnist and bumper-sticker writer (one of his latest is I’m already against the next war) and plays ocarina in the overly cautious pop band Foamola.