The June 2012 issue of The Sun features a generous excerpt of Citizens of the Dream, my book about creativity. It runs after a fascinating interview with painter Ran Ortner and a lovely poem by Alison Luterman, and right before a poem by Tony Hoagland! What humbling and awe-inspiring company!
It says quite a lot that The Sun saw fit to showcase the book. After you read the excerpt, I suggest you buy the book. We’ll be happy to send the paperback to you for the special Sun Reader Price of only $12.99, with free shipping! And the ebo0k is a virtual steal at only $2.99!
I remember one time I had this professor who said he had read all Joseph Conrad’s novels but one, because he wanted to save a few pleasures for later. If you have not read The Sun before, you are sort of in that same position: You have a great pleasure awaiting you.
The Sun first contacted me at Salon several years ago, asking would I be so kind as to make a submission for consideration? Can you believe that? A magazine just contacts you and asks you to submit something? Colleen Dunfield said that editor Sy Safransky liked my work. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know about The Sun then, and having been gainfully employed for a few years I had stopped freelancing. So I read it and thought what a wonderful magazine! But my habits of manuscript completion and submission were not stellar. So the invite languished. But I did send copies of the book Since You Asked, and after I showed myself pretty much incapable of offering a usable manuscript other than that, in 2009 they published an excerpt. Then later in 2009 I was invited to attend the annual Sun personal-writing conference at Esalen, “Into the Fire.” That was a mind-blowing experience. Then one thing and another, and I attended the conference again in 2011.
And now this excerpt.
Mind-blowing. Go out and buy it. Or just subscribe. I really believe that a subscription to The Sun has as good a chance as any of improving your overall outlook on life and sense of well-being. Plus, like in a novel, there’s no ads.
Sy started selling the “Chapel Hill Sun” on the streets of North Carolina in 1974. That’s like 38 friggin’ years ago.
Man, I’m just in awe. Thank you, Sy! Thank you, Sun Magazine!
