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 has worked as a writer, editor, and teacher. His book No More Strangers Now: Young Voices from a New South Africa was selected as an honor book for the Jane Addams Book Award. He holds a BA in history from Princeton and an MA in journalism from the University of Missouri. For several years he taught history and English at a multiracial high school in Johannesburg, South Africa, witnessing firsthand that country’s transition from apartheid to democracy. He currently lives with his wife and son in an old mill house in the funky town of Bynum, a stone’s throw from the Haw River. Tim writes at thisverysecond.com.

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, daughters Ada and Eleanor, and three 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.

David Mahaffey
Digital-Media Director

David disassembled his first computer at age twelve and deleted his first superfluous exclamation mark soon after that. At the University of North Carolina at Asheville, he spent more time editing the creative-arts magazine than he did attending English classes. In 2005 he obtained an MA in publishing and writing from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, and his gadget fluency has seen him through a host of jobs with nonprofit publishers, where nobody else knew how to build websites or replace hard drives. He is fond of puns, mountains, and acoustic music. He lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, with Sawyer, a small dog.

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. She lives in a farmhouse in Chatham County, North Carolina, with her husband, Mike (who built the house); their son, Will; Mike's son, Ben; two cats; and a one-eyed dog named Jojo.

Rachel J. Elliott
Editorial Associate

Rachel has been working at The Sun since November 1997 and has contributed photographs and interviews to its pages. She lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, with her pizza-making, bread-baking husband, Seth, and her sweet daughter, Ava. Rachel enjoys playing a bag-toss game called “cornhole” with family and friends and even has lights on her cornhole set so that the games don’t have to end when the sun goes down. She delights in taking photographs, and although she finally bought a digital camera, her first love is still film — especially shooting 120 with her Holga. She has lived in ten states and traveled in ten countries but has finally put down roots in North Carolina, close to both the ocean and the mountains she adores.

Luc Saunders
Editorial Associate

Luc joined The Sun in 2003, fresh off a plane from Thailand, where he’d taught English, studied at Buddhist monasteries, and learned — in Bangkok traffic — how to drive a motorcycle. He loves basketball, backpacking, and live music. He lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, with a cat named Huxley.

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 on two Maine islands — one accessible by bridge, the other not.

Krista Bremer
Associate Publisher, Circulation & Marketing

Krista started reading The Sun in 1992 when she was studying literature and driving limousines in California, and she joined the staff in 2002. She loves loitering at her local library, running on the wooded trails behind her house, and hearing her children laugh. Her essays have appeared in The Sun, Utne Reader, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, and a writer’s fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council.

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.

Holly McKinney
Administrative Assistant

Holly received her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001 and, before landing a job at The Sun in 2009, was an office manager at a car-repair shop. She has a deep love of music and frequently forces her girlfriends to drink wine and cry to sad songs for hours on end. She lives in Carrboro with her husband, Brockton, who makes movies about the undead; their daughter, Madeline, who thinks she is a zombie; and too many animals to count.

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 Saxapahaw, 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 wife, hanging out with his three kids, playing the guitar, and learning to identify birds by their song.

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

Gillian Kendall grew up in a peripatetic, international family full of English teachers, journalists, editors, and critics. A third-generation writer, she is also a PhD and a binational citizen who has lived in five countries and worked variously as journalist, editor, writer, and teacher after dropping out of high school and getting fired from waitressing. 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. She edited the collection Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing (all University of Wisconsin Press) and is trying to flog into shape a 460-page epic about her improbable job as a reporter for the state parliament of Victoria, Australia. www.gilliankendall.org.

Lauren Holder Raab
Proofreader

Lauren got her first library card at the age of three and had read one thousand books by the time she was ten. She went on to study English and psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she's been working with words ever since. Currently, Lauren is a technical editor at a social-research institute. Previous positions include communications director for the North Carolina Writers’ Network. She lives with her husband and son in her hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she grew up alongside The Sun.

Angela Winter
Writing Retreats

Angela writes, sings, tends flowers, and tinkers with ayurvedic recipes. After nine years of working for The Sun in a variety of staff roles, from administrative assistant to associate publisher, Angela gave up her dream job to spend more time dreaming. She lives with her husband in Carrboro, North Carolina, where she works part-time as a consultant and watches hawks and hummingbirds fly past her porch. Angela’s essays and interviews have appeared in The Sun and Utne Reader.