Sy Safransky
Editor and Publisher

Sy Safransky was editor of his junior-high newspaper, his high-school newspaper, and his college newspaper. (Guess where this is heading.) He earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, then worked as a newspaper reporter until he discovered that the real news is what connects us. Twice divorced, in 1983 he married an adorable hippie who today is an adorable psychiatrist — a good thing for him. He has one stepson, two daughters, and three cats. Miraculously, the magazine he founded in 1974 survives to this day, but in heaven things sometimes turn out that way.

Tim McKee
Managing Editor

Tim joined The Sun in 2006. He previously worked as a writer, editor, and teacher. His book No More Strangers Now: Young Voices from a New South Africa (DK Publishing) was selected as an honor book for the Jane Addams Book Award. After attending a Sun retreat at Esalen in 2003, Tim founded the Bay Area Sun Reading and Writing Group, which he coordinated until he left Oakland to join the Sun staff. Tim holds a BA in history from Princeton and a MA in journalism from the University of Missouri. In his spare time, he chases his son Rio around their old mill house near the Haw River, eats his wife Anna’s delicious meals, plays ultimate Frisbee, and reads and writes poetry.

Andrew Snee
Senior Editor

Andrew has been at The Sun since 1994. Over the years he’s had the pleasure of arguing the finer points of nonrestrictive clauses and serial commas with many authors whose experience and talent should have intimidated him more than it did. He studied creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and after graduation worked for Independent Weekly of Durham, North Carolina, editing its entertainment listings. (“Our band’s name is LimoZeen, capital L, i-m-o, capital Z, e-e-n.”) He’s thankful for the experience, and glad to have moved on to The Sun. He’s married to his college sweetheart, Julie. They live in Raleigh, North Carolina, and have two boys, Andy and David, born six years apart.

Robert Graham
Art Director

Robert joined The Sun in 2001, having previously worked as a graphic designer for a hospital, a mail-order bicycle catalog, and a plastic-skeleton manufacturer. He lives with his partner Rachel, daughter Ada, and four cats in a shrinking patch of beautiful woods, and wonders how long he’ll continue to be able to see the Milky Way before the streetlights of encroaching subdivisions pollute the night sky. A failure at Buddhist meditation, he instead finds solace in playing guitar and documenting the local flora and fauna with small watercolor paintings. When not making his own music, he hosts concerts in his backyard amphitheater.

Colleen Donfield
Manuscript Editor

Colleen has been reading manuscripts for The Sun since 1994 and in that time has gone from single-vision to progressive lenses. Before joining The Sun, she worked in San Francisco and New York City in a variety of jobs ranging from motel maid to a clerk on Wall Street. She is a fabric enthusiast, a newshound, and a daydreamer. She received her BA at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Raleigh with her husband, Craig Jarvis, daughter Claire, and Rudy, the little brown dog.

Erica Berkeley
Editorial Associate

Erica Berkeley hated the South when she first came to North Carolina from Massachusetts in 1997. She was poised to escape back to her Yankee roots when she met her future husband, landed a job at The Sun, and decided she couldn’t leave. She has since fully embraced Southern culture, even on occasion saying, “Y’all,” much to the chagrin of her New England parents. Her husband built their farmhouse in Chatham County, North Carolina, which they share with his two children, her two cats, and a one-eyed dog named Jojo.

Rachel J. Elliott
Editorial Associate

Rachel knows how to move. She has lived in ten states and traveled in ten countries, her trusty Canon AE-1 camera always in hand. She eventually slowed down enough to marry a bread baker and give birth to her radiant daughter, Ava. She began working at The Sun in 1997, and several of her photographs and interviews have appeared in its pages. She relishes her bike ride into work, delicious meals with good friends, and live music at the Cat’s Cradle.

Luc Saunders
Editorial Assistant

Luc was hired as an administrative assistant at The Sun in 2003 and is now an editorial assistant. He is an avid reader and backpacker who once a year hikes to the top of his beloved Gregory Bald in the Appalachian Mountains and savors the taste of its wild blueberries. He lives in a small house with green floors in Carrboro, North Carolina, with his girlfriend and their two cats. When the spirit is willing, he writes in a shack in the backyard.

Seth Mirsky
Proofreader

Seth began working for The Sun in 1993. A graduate of Wesleyan University and Harvard Divinity School — with degrees in science in society and theological studies, respectively — Seth has published articles on men, feminism, and contemporary religion, and is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (Continuum). Though not a professor like his partner, Cynthia, Seth has taught college-level classes on religion, ecology, and globalization.  He loves music — probably more than he does words — and plays several instruments, but mostly guitar.  Drawn to the ocean, he lives part of the year in coastal California and part on a Maine island.

Krista Bremer
Associate Publisher, Circulation & Marketing

Krista started reading The Sun when she was studying literature and driving limousines in California. She’s traveled to Europe, Mexico, South Asia, and most recently her husband’s native country of Libya, where she met her in-laws for the first time. (They gave her daughter a Muslim Barbie covered in a black burka.) She loves loitering at her local library, running on the wooded trails behind her house, and hearing her children laugh. She joined the staff in 2002. Her essays have appeared in The Sun, Utne Reader, and elsewhere.

Angela Winter
Associate Publisher, Digital Media & Operations

Angela studied psychology at Duke University and flirted with careers in academia and technical writing before discovering The Sun during her honeymoon in the Massachusetts Berkshires. As a result of the magazine’s stealthy influence, she got rid of her television set, went vegan, left the high-tech corporate world, and finally joined the staff in 2001. Outside the office, she sings, tends flowers, and works with clients in her polarity-therapy practice. She lives with her husband in Carrboro, North Carolina, and one of her greatest delights is walking to work each morning.

Becky Gee
Director of Finance

Becky is a native North Carolinian who lived in California, Arkansas, Florida, and Germany before she was dragged kicking and screaming back to North Carolina, where she raised a daughter and enrolled at N.C. State University as a “nontraditional” student. She added a degree in English to her accounting degree and then joined The Sun staff in 2000. When she isn’t catering to the needs of her in-charge little dog, Zoe, Becky likes to garden, read, and write fiction. Although her writing aspirations aren’t grand, she occasionally dreams of publishing an acceptable American novella.

Molly Herboth
Circulation Assistant

Molly studied English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Upon graduation, in the grand tradition of people with English degrees, she found work as a nanny and then as “bridal coordinator” at a local salon. Today she is happily employed as the The Sun’s circulation assistant. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, working crossword puzzles, and listening to National Public Radio.

Angel Knopf
Administrative Assistant

Angel grew up in the back country of Michigan, listening to comedy albums by Da Yoopers. She received her BSW from Ferris State University and has used her degree in her various administrative-assistant positions. She joined The Sun in 2006 and is the cheerful voice on the other end of the line for people who call the editorial office. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband and two ferocious, hockey-loving cats, Chelios and Brind’Amour.

Marianne Erhardt
Manuscript Reader

Marianne received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she taught, wrote, and generally brooded over poetry. In a flashier former life, she performed in a murder-mystery cabaret, for which she wore unflattering shades of lipstick. Now, after a record-breaking Midwest winter, Marianne is delighted to be living in Carrboro, North Carolina, with her high-school sweetheart, writing poetry and fiction, and working for The Sun.

Dave Hart
Manuscript Reader

Dave started reading The Sun back in the early 1980s, when it offered a welcome ray of hope during the Reagan presidency and the rise of MTV. Many years later, in 2008, he began working for The Sun as a manuscript reader. He’s a journalist by trade, and like most journalists he’s eager for that big novel inside him to go ahead and start writing itself. Should happen any day now. When he’s not reading or writing, he spends his time enjoying life and its many wines with his girlfriend, hanging out with his three kids, playing the guitar, and learning to identify birds by their song.

Ann Humphreys
Manuscript Reader

Ann is a native Tar Heel who has lived in New York City, San Francisco, and Calcutta, only to find that you can’t beat Carrboro, North Carolina. She stopped by The Sun office in the midnineties, sweaty and disheveled from an afternoon run, and left holding three copies of the magazine and a job application. After three happy years of being a manuscript reader, Ann took a ten-year break to get her MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College, work in death-penalty appeals, and become a professional hula-hooper. (Yes, really.) She now assists her wonderful partner, Baxter, with hula-hoop lessons, reads manuscripts by night, and tries to keep her mutt Vincent entertained.

Paula Jolin
Manuscript Reader

Paula spent ten years living and working in the Middle East, where she learned that sometimes the best way to get where you’re going is to take the wrong train, and nothing in life is so bad that a cup of mint tea can’t make it better. She now lives in Cary, North Carolina, with her husband and two children, where they grow their own herbs and spend way too much time cooking. In the quiet of the early mornings, she writes novels — her first book, In the Name of God (Roaring Brook Press), was published in April 2007, and her second, Three Witches, is due out in 2009.

Gillian Kendall
Manuscript Reader

Like Harriet the Spy, Gillian is going to be a novelist when she grows up. She recently saw a convincing psychic who predicted a novel. (“Not a love story,” she said. “Maybe a sad story.”)   Meanwhile Gillian is struggling to revise a 460-page epic about her improbable job as a reporter for the state parliament of Victoria, Australia. She is the author of many so-far uncollected short stories and essays as well as two books: How I Became a Human Being: A Disabled Man’s Quest for Independence, coauthored with Mark O’Brien, and Mr. Ding’s Chicken Feet: On a Slow Boat from Shanghai to Texas (both University of Wisconsin Press). She has won a few obscure prizes and is using creative visualization to turn her latest book into a movie. She has worked for The Sun since 1997.

Brent Winter
Proofreader

When Brent was twenty, he decided to become a writer, because it seemed like a good career choice for an obsessive reader who was also a college dropout. He worked in restaurants and wrote short stories until he got a job in the mailroom of a medical-newsletter publishing company, which led to his first editorial job. Brent eventually finished his bachelor’s degree and got an MFA in creative writing. (You don’t have to have a degree to be a writer, he says, but it can’t hurt.) Since then he’s gotten a few pieces published — and received a number of rejections from The Sun. He’s currently working as a freelance editor and co-writing a screenplay with his best friend from junior high school.