SA30: The Thirtieth Issue is the last issue in a ten-year run of the American publication on music and musicians edited by trumpet player and composer Nate Wooley. SA30 is a love letter to the creative humanity that the journal has tried to illuminate since its first issue. It is a celebration of work: how we do it, why we do it, and the doubts and triumphs we experience as it allows us to blunder toward some fuzzy creative resolution. To that end, the issue consists of interviews between artists from different milieus—all with a connection to the music that SA has championed over the years—and SA editor Nate Wooley about their working lives. Poet Eileen Myles, pastry chef Natasha Pickowicz, painter Albert Oehlen, and dancer/organizer Patricia Nicholson Parker share the issue's space with composer Nico Muhly, iconoclastic sound artist Ellen Fullman, and improvising bassist Brandon Lopez in talking about the personal ups and downs of living as an artist in America. It also features a long excerpt of an interview with iconic percussionist and composer Michael Ranta undertaken by American composer Sarah Hennies and Swiss writer and composer Vincent de Roguin. Percussionist and composer Lesley Mok contributes a conceptually stunning standalone Exquisite Corpse composition to close out this last issue.

A journal founded in 2012 by Nate Wooley, providing in-depth interviews and essays, Sound American starts from a simple desire to open the doors of experimental music to a wider audience. Sound American believes that music is for everyone and should be shared on the most basic human level. Sound American aims to accomplish this by creating a direct intellectual, social, and emotional bridge that links audiences and artists.