Welcome

Galaxies colliding, Hubble Telescope, NASA
(click each image to embiggen)

Welcome to the ninth online edition of Under the Sun and to our 25th edition since we began publishing in 1996. This past year, in the year of coronavirus, we looked outward and inward to find meaning and to create art. As you might expect, many of the essays we received this year

Coronavirus emerging from a cell, NIAID


centered on coronavirus, and so we begin and end with pandemic essays. Emily Blacker’s lovely “Notes from the Rooftop” reminds us of the uncertainty and mix of emotions that beset us in April of 2020, when no one in the world could predict what trajectory the pandemic would take. Melanie Hoffert’s “Bird Rearing During a Pandemic” reflects on both the loss and the gain the pandemic brought to her. In between these two, our other essays touch on the specific challenges of our recent times as well as the timeless challenges of being human. This year we also celebrate the winners of our first writing contests, held both last summer and last fall.
        The astonishing photos above bring to mind Lao-tse’s observation that “the wise man looks into space and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too big, for he knows that there is no limit to dimensions.” They are also a tribute to the many wonderful images available online for free, offered by institutions like NASA and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as by individual artists who ask only the price of being credited. We celebrate that ethic at Under the Sun and emulate it. We are the product of many wonderful readers who offer their attention for free, simply to promote literary art and to build a reading and writing community.
        Certainly coronavirus and the past year have felt like a collision to many of us, and we have endured it as a collective trauma. The NASA photo shows another type of collision that is common throughout the universe, and one that will befall our own galaxy when it collides with the Andromeda galaxy in four billion years. Far from obliterating either galaxy though, the clash will eventually meld us into another larger galaxy, but one that will go on emitting light and sustaining the lives within it.

Image by Senjuti Kunduspan

        We are small on the scale of galaxies, and yet at times we create a type of light too. There is much of it to be found in the essays that live within this edition of Under the Sun, and a lesson of the universe is that this light will continue to travel on after we are gone, and that it will travel far.

 

 

 

 

Our Readers

Under the Sun welcomes Nomi Isenberg and Cindy Bradley as co-assistant editors this year. Nomi joined us last year from Israel, and Cindy Bradley has been published three times in our pages. Her “Death, Driveways, and Dreams” was chosen as a Notable by The Best American Essays. We also welcome another former contributor as a reader, Patty Somlo. Two other readers join us from Israel, Renee Atlas and Elana Dorfman. We welcome back all of these readers from last year and from previous years: Ann Lewald, Jere Mitchum, Ralph Bowden, Richard Doran, and Leigh Wieland. We thank our Tennessee Tech interns: Rosemary McLean, Valerie Hubert, Jessica Hunt, and Jake Gentry. They were an important part of our selection process this year. We thank Patricia Foster, the final judge for our summer writing contest. We thank our advisors and our web designer, Carl Shires. You can learn more about all of us at “About Us.”

 

Clementines by Abby Ripley

Ruminations

Since 2010, Under the Sun has published an essay by Mel Livatino every year. In all, from publication in Under the Sun and other journals, Mel has received eleven Notables from The Best American Essays. This year in his essay “Why I Write Essays” Mel reflects on his own craft in a way that is both beautiful and helpful to his fellow writers.

 

Art by Fabio Lastrucci

Thank you

We thank everyone who contributed financially to make Under the Sun possible this year: thanks to Jere Mitchum, Martha Highers, Charles Denning, Heide Weidner, Ann Lewald, Richard Doran, Ralph Bowden, and to the Tennessee Arts Commission. Once again, we have created a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.