Advisory Board

Mel Livatino’s essays have appeared numerous times in Under the Sun, The Sewanee Review, Notre Dame Magazine, Portland Magazine, Writing on the Edge, River Teeth, and elsewhere. In the last 15 years ten of his essays, including six from UtS, have been named Notable Essays of the Year by Robert Atwan’s Best American Essays annual. He lives in Evanston, IL, and is retired from teaching English for 36 years in the City Colleges of Chicago. He has finished a collection of essays entitled Wintry Rooms of Love and is currently looking for a publisher. He is also at work revising a book about his wife’s 11-year descent into Alzheimer’s, her death, and the grief of losing her twice, tentatively titled Long Cry of Goodbye: Days and Nights of Alzheimer’s, Death, and Grief.

Michael O’Rourke’s essays have appeared in North American Review, Gettysburg Review, ISLE, Capitalism Nature Socialism, and other journals, and five have been cited as “Notable” by the editors of Best American Essays. His book is Paul Bunyan Lives! and Other Tales from the Natural World. He founded Under the Sun in 1996 and was its original editor.

Heidemarie Z. Weidner is Professor Emerita of Rhetoric and Composition at Tennessee Technological University and directed the Writing Program there from 1993-2001. She has been with Under the Sun since its beginning in 1996, first as an associate editor and from 2001-2018 as its editor. She has numerous academic publications and has also published creative nonfiction. She lives in Cookeville, Tennessee.