We publish personal essays, short stories, poems, and black-and-white photography in print and online in our monthly magazine.
We’re looking for narrative writing and evocative photography from all over the world. Send us work that maps the human landscape, where the light catches on the faintest joy, where darkness sometimes threatens to overwhelm, and where ✗ never marks the spot because the truth is never so simple.
First-time authors and award-winners alike find their place in The Sun. We are particularly interested in submissions from marginalized voices.
Our uncommonly supportive community of readers includes 60,000 print subscribers and thousands more website visitors. And The Sun is ad-free, so when we share your work, we don’t crowd it with distracting sales pitches.
Detailed submission guidelines, including our compensation rates, are available on our website.
Essays, Fiction, & Poetry
Writing that can turn heads, open hearts, and change minds.
We publish personal essays, short stories, and poems by established and emerging writers from all over the world. Click here for submission guidelines and payment rates.
Readers Write is a feature in The Sun where readers share their personal writing on a given topic — a unique fixture of the magazine since the section’s inception in 1978. Send us your true story on an upcoming topic, and if we publish it you’ll receive a complimentary one-year subscription.
Not sure what to write? See below for some prompts to spark an idea. Writing style isn’t as important as thoughtfulness and sincerity, and topics are intentionally broad to give room for expression and interpretation.
You can read a sample Readers Write section here.
Upcoming Topics
Milk
Due December 1
Some love it; others can’t tolerate it. We pour it on cereal, add it to coffee, and blend it with ice cream to make shakes. It comes out of cows’ udders, nursing mothers’ bosoms, and schoolkids’ noses in the cafeteria. It’s a symbol of all that is nurturing and a source of fat we want to eliminate from our diets. But try as we might to replace it with watered-down oats and almonds and soy, these are all pale substitutes for the real thing. Send us your stories about milk by December 1: the memories and associations, the diets and indulgences, the personal experiences of drinking it, producing it, loving it, or hating it.
Distractions
Due January 1
Distractions are a part of daily life: The baby that starts crying as soon as you sit down to work. The magazine that takes your mind off waiting for news at the hospital. The cute guy you can’t stop eyeing while you’re studying at the library. And in a world where our attention is currency, most of us carry a machine built to distract us in our pockets. For some people, internal intrusions—anxieties, fantasies, the argument they can’t stop rehashing—are louder than any ping or buzz. Others are able to filter out everything but what they want to focus on. Distractions can hinder our progress, can help us cope, or can be just a nuisance to overcome. Send us your true stories about how they affect you by January 1.
We’re interested in black-and-white photographs. We’re not looking for photojournalism, just unique perspectives on the world around us — especially human interactions.
Please review our full submission guidelines and sample photographs before sending us your work.