All posts tagged: Sofia Belimova

Friday Reads: July 2023

Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA and OLIVE AMDUR

The fireworks have finally quieted down, but July has just begun to heat up! Whether you are looking for a book to help you forget the hot weather or a book filled with just as many vivid sensations as the summer season is, keep on reading. In this month’s Friday Reads feature, three of our interns recommend dynamic stories about the nightclubs of the Midwest, a boarding school in coastal Rhode Island, and the tangled relationships of a young person’s body and spirits.

Friday Reads: July 2023
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Friday Reads: November 2022

Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA

 

We launched Issue 24 last week, which features an exciting medley of writing: pieces about journalists and translators, forest fires and traveling icebergs, ghosts, cousins, and parents. Wondering what our contributors are reading? Check out their book recommendations below: 

Friday Reads: November 2022
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I Will Be in the Place You Least Expect to Find Me: 10 Questions with Latifa Baqa

Latifa Baqa’s gripping stream of consciousness short story “Adam’s Apple” is a highlight of Issue 21’s portfolio of fiction from Morocco. A feminist, human rights activist, and award-winning author, Baqa is interviewed by The Common interns Sofia Belimova, Olive Amdur, Adaku Nwokiwu, and Eliza Brewer. They discuss editing, the devil in the details, and countering the traditional expectation of the male gaze. Nariman Youssef translated the interview, as well as the original story. This is the first of two interviews conducted by the summer interns with Issue 21 contributors; the second will be with Abdelmajid Haouasse.

Headshot of a middle aged Moroccan woman with glasses standing in front of a pond on a sunny day

TC interns (TC): What inspired “Adam’s Apple?” Can you describe your process of writing and revising it?

Latifa Baqa (LB): The idea behind ​​“Adam’s Apple,” like pretty much all ideas you may find in any of my fictional texts, began with a sentence. Meaning that one sentence preceded the idea, in a way not unlike how one note might resonate in a musician’s head before the rest of the tune. This is how it often happens: before I begin writing, a lone sentence rises up in my thoughts, for no obvious reason. I remember how this one stuck in my head for days: “We shouldn’t lay bare what we carry within us more than once.” The rest of the story followed from that sentence, beginning with a minor character who barely features in the narrative: Alzamourie, the neighborhood’s baker, who was a real person in the working class neighborhood where I was born and raised. To be more precise, one element that started making its way into the story was Alzamourie’s teeth. I just could never forget his teeth. It seems almost absurd, but I find more reassurance in the foggy arbitrariness of memory than in the clarity of conventional reality.

I Will Be in the Place You Least Expect to Find Me: 10 Questions with Latifa Baqa
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Phosphorescence Reading Series: Poets from The Common

Phosphorescence Reading Series Banner With Poets' Headshots.

Join the Emily Dickinson Museum and The Common on September 23rd at 6PM EDT for the Phosphorescence Poetry Reading Series, celebrating present-day literary craft that echoes Emily Dickinson’s revolutionary voice. This reading features Elizabeth Metzger, Chloe Martinez, Rodney A. Brown, and Moriel Rothman-Zecher, all of whose work has been published in The Common.

This event is part of the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival, which brings together contemporary creativity of the Pioneer Valley and Dickinson’s legendary writing. This fully virtual festival, running September 20th – 26th, will feature panels, readings, and masterclasses. All of these events are free and open to the public, but registration is required to access the links. Please register here.

Click Here to Register

Phosphorescence Reading Series: Poets from The Common
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Friday Reads: July 2021

Curated by ELLY HONG

In our July edition of Friday Reads, two TC interns and one volunteer reader recommend transportive summer reading, ranging from a novel about a trip to Greece to a good old-fashioned western. Read onward for discussions of a braided Faulkner novel, a flâneur novelist, and two cowboys down on their luck.

Recommendations: If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem by William Faulkner, Outline by Rachel Cusk, Hanging Woman Creek by Louis L’Amour.

Friday Reads: July 2021
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Friday Reads: March 2021

Curated by ISABEL MEYERS 

Here in Western Massachusetts, the harsh New England winter is gradually thawing, and our greyish snowbanks are melting into puddles. Meanwhile, our interns have returned to their spring semester classes and their work at The Common. This March, we’re hearing what’s propelled them through their long winter break toward a brighter and warmer spring. 

Recommendations: The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud, The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune, Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee, A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet

Friday Reads: March 2021
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