Staci Kleinmaier

Editor + Writer

Profiles

NC State Magazine •

With an Open Heart

When Suzanne Boots Knighton ’00 had heart-attack symptoms on a mountain-bike ride in 2020, she ignored them. “Who wants to have a heart attack at 42?” she asks. But heart disease can happen at any age. It’s the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States, accounting for 1 in 5 deaths in 2022.


Admitting to herself that some­thing was wrong turned out to be easier than convincing doctors. Even after her cardiologist found three congenital heart defects, he still attributed Kni...
NC State Magazine •

Field Work

WUNC reporter Aaron Sánchez-Guerra ’18 was hired at North Carolina Public Radio in April 2024 to cover topics of race, class and communities. But he admits, “that’s a very vague and broad beat.” More specifically, he loves to talk to people and cover issues that he relates to. He is a native of the Rio Grande Valley, and he sees journalism as “a way to highlight issues that [are] underreported, that [are] marginalized, that are overlooked.”


As a student journalist Sánchez-Guerra interned with...
NC State Magazine •

Coloring Outside the Lines

When Amanda Solliday, a horticultural science Ph.D. student, had the idea for a cut-flower garden on campus, she envisioned growing exclusively red and white flowers to display at university events. She saw the garden as a way to promote sustainability through local flower cultivation, offer students volunteer and leadership opportunities, and foster real-world skills. As the garden has progressed from idea to reality, it has accomplished nearly all of those goals.
NC State Magazine •

All Funds and Games

NC State Ph.D. student and Wake County, N.C., high school teacher Michael Prelaske is helping students through game-based learning and scholarships. He is the founder of 1347 Games, a nonprofit focused on creating standards-based, multiplayer, digital simulations for the classroom. “Learning takes place through stories and play,” says Prelaske, who has taught at Middle Creek High School in Apex, N.C., since 2014. “There’s very little play incorporated into the modern social studies curriculum, b...
NC State Magazine •

Reel Talk

Five years ago, if you’d told Mariana Fabian ’23 that in 2025 she would be promoting her first feature film, she wouldn’t have believed you. Then, Fabian was a first-year student studying psychology at NC State. She hadn’t yet changed her major to film studies, and she hadn’t met Catherine Argyrople, the film’s co-writer.


But when COVID hit in the spring of 2020, Fabian relieved the boredom of social distancing by writing opinion pieces for the Technician. Argyrople, then a Northeastern Unive...
NC State Magazine •

First Edition

Brennan Selcz spent the summer reading novels about the end of the world. He’s researching how post-World War II literature reflects people’s anxieties about atomic fallout. Though he started his time at NC State in STEM fields, Selcz, now beginning his senior year, is majoring in English and political science and applying both a scientific and humanist mindset to his research. “Science needs to be viewed as a humanistic endeavor,” he says. “We need to remember that what it’s doing is for the be...
NC State Magazine •

Around the World in Seven Marathons

Within 12 months of his 70th birthday, Bryan Benton ’77 ran a marathon on each of the seven continents. While he’s always been active, participating in tennis, racquetball and football through the years, it wasn’t until he made an offhand comment about his wife’s running that he picked up the sport. She’d just completed her first marathon in Raleigh, when, as Benton tells the story, he “mistakenly made the comment, ‘Well, you walked some.’” He laughs about it now and says, “That didn’t go over s...
The Sun Magazine •

Rachel J. Elliott on Twenty-Five Years with The Sun

Rachel Elliott started at The Sun as an editorial office assistant in 1997, processing the mail and fulfilling book orders. Now, as editorial associate and photo editor, there is not much of the magazine production process that Rachel isn’t involved in. She helps select photos, manuscripts, and Readers Write pieces for publication. She corresponds with photographers, authors, and readers. She assists with page layout and juggles behind-t...
The Sun Magazine •

Say the Hardest Thing

I have little patience for small talk. I would rather go deep into personal, raw topics than rehash my weekend. That is one of the reasons why I enjoy reading The Sun : it feels like an intimate conversation between writer and reader, and I’m blown away by the vulnerability Sun contributors show. I’m thinking of essays like “ Inheritance,” by Debbie Urbanski; “ Ghost Dogs,” by Andre Dubus III; and “ What to Expect,” by Molly Bashaw—and, as our March 2024 issue hits mailboxes and inboxes this mo...
The Sun Magazine •

Camille Guthrie on Writing Fiction

Camille Guthrie sent her short story “Dating Profile” to The Sun in response to a submission call for humorous writing. “Make us laugh,” we said, and she certainly did. I was tired and grumpy when I first read “Dating Profile.” Even in that compromised state, I couldn’t help myself. I fell into the story, laughing as the narrator poked fun at small-town life, dating, and parenthood. She won me over because she threw just as many zingers back at herself as she doled out. The narrator didn’t take...
The Sun Magazine •

Where the Hunger Leads

The Sun has published three short stories by Kate Osterloh: “Believers,” which focuses on faith and religious doubt, and “Maryam and Yeshua” and “The Bleeding Woman,” which both reimagine Bible stories. Her writing is warm and rich, and her characters feel real and complex. But after reading each of her pieces, I found myself increasingly curious about Kate’s life and experiences. I knew little about her, except that she is a former US foreign diplomat, which only made her seem more mythical....
The Sun Magazine •

A Game We Play

By her own admission, Leona Sevick is a latecomer to poetry. She was trained as an American literature scholar and never took a creative-writing class. Twelve years ago, eighteen years into her teaching career, she wrote her first poem on a napkin while sitting at a bar. “It sounds so cliché,” she says, “but that’s what happened.” At the urging of a colleague, she submitted the poem to the Split This Rock contest and the poet Naomi Shihab Nye chose it as the winner. “Then there was no turning ba...
NC State Magazine •

Indoor Species

Vanessa Woods, a PhD student in NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, spends a lot of time with puppies. As director of the Puppy Kindergarten at Duke University, Woods helps train young dogs to become service animals. Included in the puppies’ training are outings to improve mental health throughout the campus community, much like the Pause for Paws program at NC State. Seeing how people responded to the dogs’ visits got Woods thinking: “Puppies make people happy, but not everybod...
NC State Magazine •

A Single Stone

For more than forty years, members of the NC State community have gathered in February for the Sisterhood Dinner, a celebration of Wolfpack women’s accomplishments. Originally known as the Susan B. Anthony Dinner (and held near her February 15th birthday), the evening tees up Women’s History Month in March with a dinner for 600 in the Talley Student Union Ballroom, keynote and guest speakers, and a silent auction benefiting the Women’s Center.
NC State Magazine •

Unpacking the Unthinkable

When Helene hit western North Carolina on September 26, 2024, it had weakened from a Category 4 hurricane to a tropical storm. But the damage it caused was immense. Between eight and 24 inches of rain fell over three days in parts of the mountains, saturating the land and teeing up one of the worst natural disasters western North Carolina has experienced. Raging rivers and mudslides washed away roads and homes, and at least 98 people lost their lives in North Carolina. Many mountain communities...
The Sun Magazine •

Finding the Story

Elana Kupor is the author of “The Thistle Steps,” an essay featured in our October 2022 issue. She lives in Seattle, Washington, and works as a licensed mental-health counselor. Kupor has been hard of hearing since birth, and in her essay she interweaves her present-day experiences with scenes from her childhood.

Sun Editorial Assistant Staci Kleinmaier recently spoke with Kupor about writing, identity, and disability. “The Thistle Steps” is Kupor’s first publication in The Sun.

 

I had...
The Sun Magazine •

What Poetry Can Do

Kathryn Jordan is a writer, musician, and teacher who lives in Berkeley, California. Her poetry chapbook, Riding Waves, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018.

Since the pandemic lockdown began, Jordan has treated her time like a sabbatical: taking morning hikes in the woods, playing piano, and focusing on her writing. She met with Sun Editorial Assistant Staci Kleinmaier via video call to discuss writing and her poem “My Late Breast” in our April 2021 issue. This poem is Jordan’s first...