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Inside Sy Safransky’s Notebook

“The Sun” magazine has been a Chapel Hill institution for more than four decades. It started in 1974 when editor and publisher Sy Safransky borrowed $50 to get the magazine started. Safransky had no idea where he would find funding to keep the production afloat, but he was confident that his vision for a “personal, political, and provocative” magazine would bring together readers and writers alike.A conversation with Si Safransky, editor and publisher of “The Sun”, about his new book

The magazine now has more than 70,000 paid subscribers and continues to produce monthly issues that are ad free. For the past 15 years, each magazine has also contained a section called “Sy Safransky’s Notebook,” that features excerpts from his personal journal. A new book “Many Alarm Clocks: Selections from Sy Safransky’s Notebook” (The Sun Publishing Company/2015) is a collection of these pieces.

Host Frank Stasio talks with Safransky, editor and publisher of “The Sun.” 

The May 2015 issue of The Sun magazine features a photograph of the photographer's son at a salvage yard in Lafayette, IN in the early 1970s.
Natalie Leimkuhler /
The May 2015 issue of The Sun magazine features a photograph of the photographer's son at a salvage yard in Lafayette, IN in the early 1970s.
Sy Safransky, editor and publisher of The Sun, signs copies of "Many Alarm Clocks" at a readin in Minneapolis.
Andrew Snee /
Sy Safransky, editor and publisher of The Sun, signs copies of "Many Alarm Clocks" at a readin in Minneapolis.
Portrait of Sy Safransky, founder and editor of The Sun.
Rachel J. Elliott /
Portrait of Sy Safransky, founder and editor of The Sun.

Copyright 2015 North Carolina Public Radio

Anita Rao is the host and creator of "Embodied," a live, weekly radio show and seasonal podcast about sex, relationships & health. She's also the managing editor of WUNC's on-demand content. She has traveled the country recording interviews for the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps production department, founded and launched a podcast about millennial feminism in the South, and served as the managing editor and regular host of "The State of Things," North Carolina Public Radio's flagship daily, live talk show. Anita was born in a small coal-mining town in Northeast England but spent most of her life growing up in Iowa and has a fond affection for the Midwest.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.