501(c)3 Board

Martha Highers incorporated Under the Sun as a nonprofit in the spring of 2019, after assuming the editorship from Heide Weidner in the fall of 2018. Prior to that Heide Weidner had been editor of the journal for years, since soon after it began in 1996. Michael O’Rourke, a Tennessee Tech English professor, initiated the journal originally as a project in one of his writing classes and remained its editor until 2001. Associated with Tennessee Tech University for as long as Heide Weidner taught there, the journal became independent in 2013 when Heide retired from teaching and took the journal with her, converting it from a print to an online journal that year. Under the Sun is incorporated as a nonprofit literary journal in the state of Tennessee, and Martha Highers serves as one of its editors and readers and is also currently chairwoman of its board.

Ann Jared Lewald is retired from teaching Learning Support for English Composition 1 at Tennessee Technological University. She is also a poet and has published numerous poems. She has attended an Oxford Round Table in ESL and is currently an active participant in the Sawmill Poetry series in Cookeville, Tennessee. She was an associate editor for Under the Sun beginning in 2005 and continued to read for the journal until 2021. Other than Heide Weidner, Ann read for the journal longer than anyone else. Ann retired from reading for the journal in 2021, but she remains on its 501(c)3 board. Along with Martha Highers, she was one of the board’s founding members.

Born and raised in Georgia, Monic Ductan now lives in Tennessee, where she teaches creative writing and literature at Tennessee Tech University. Monic’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Southeast Review, Shenandoah, Oxford American, South Carolina Review, Water~Stone Review, The Fourth River, and Arkansas Review. She received the 2019 Denny C. Plattner Award in nonfiction from Appalachian Review for her essay “Fantasy Worlds,” which was also listed as notable in Best American Essays 2019. Her short story collection, Daughters of Muscadine, was published in 2023 by the University of Kentucky Press, and she is at work on a novel. Monic has been a member of the Under the Sun Board since 2021.

Charles Denning is a journalist, from ‘cub reporter’ at age 18 for a big-city paper to editor of a small town daily. He was editor of the Herald-Citizen newspaper in Cookeville, Tennessee, for 35 years. Along with Martha Highers and Ann Lewald, he was a founding member of the Under the Sun nonprofit board.

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Honorary Advisors

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.