Emily Everett

eeverett

The Ghost of Jack Radovich 

The Ghost of Jack Radovich 

November 29, 2023 ,

By TERESA B. WILSON-GUNN

Author's parents in a group photo from a Filipino immigrant labor camp

Photo from a labor camp for Filipino farmworkers. The author’s parents are in the center, holding her older brothers.

 
Mama saw her boss, Jack Radovich, standing in her row during a sweltering San Joaquin afternoon. She was picking table grapes alone when he suddenly appeared, several yards away, gazing off in the direction of the blue-gray Sierra mountains. She assumed he was surveying his vineyards, visiting his farmworkers like he aways did. He was a hardworking landowner, who usually let his young sons build and deliver the packing boxes with a beat-up, sunburnt pickup truck. The kind of boss who always seemed to know when the grape packers needed more boxes. He didn’t call out or turn toward her, but she hurried his way, eager to be the first one from her team to claim the boxes. Daddy was her foreman.

The Ghost of Jack Radovich 
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Double Infinity

Double Infinity

November 6, 2023 , , ,

By MARIA TERRONE

On 88th, the street where I lived as a girl when an hour could seem an eternity, it would be years before I met the young man who pointed out that those numbers, turned on their sides, had a special meaning. What meaning? I wondered and pondered the two unbroken loops pinched at their centers, forever returning to themselves like a pair of ice skaters tracing figure eights into a state of bliss. I wondered if he thought that love is infinite, that our souls will live forever, that sky even on crystalline days moves into unseeable endless space. I was thinking that the iris of his hazel eyes pulled me into a place where I could feel lost or float before thought was possible, as if in vitro. I no longer live on 88th Street, having left double infinity in its impossible realm. Because infinity cannot be multiplied or divided—infinity just is. Still, I was grateful that I didn’t live on Main Street or Elm, and the young man I married found meaning on that finite block in Queens where he found me.

Double Infinity
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Issue 26 of The Common

Issue 26 of The Common

October 31, 2023

Issue 26 cover: light pink background with a turnip and greens

Issue 26 launches on November 6, 2023


Click here to purchase your print or digital copy, starting at just $8.

After November 6, browse the Table of Contents, including online exclusives, at thecommononline.org/issues/issue-26.

Love Issue 26’s portfolio of writing from the farmworker community? Donate to support The Common’s mission to feature new and underrepresented voices from around the world.

Interested in teaching Issue 26 in your class? Click here to explore your options and resources.

Issue 26 of The Common
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Issue 26 Launch Party in Amherst [VIDEO]

Issue 26 Launch Party in Amherst [VIDEO]

October 5, 2023 ,

This event has passed, but you can watch a recording below! (Closed captions are included; download a transcript here.)

 

Issue 26 cover: light pink background with a turnip and greens

The Common Fall Launch Party
Thursday, November 9, 2023, 6pm
Friendly Reading Room, Frost Library
Amherst College, Amherst, MA

Free and open to the public, wine and food from La Veracruzana provided.

 
Join us to celebrate the launch of Issue 26, with three contributors to our portfolio of writing from the farmworker community!

We welcome portfolio co-editor Miguel M. Morales, poet Julián David Bañuelos, and prose writer Nora Rodriguez Camagna for brief readings and conversation about place, immigration, writing, farmwork, and family. All three of our guests grew up doing seasonal farmwork with their families. The event will be hosted by the magazine’s managing editor Emily Everett.

Pioneer Valley Workers Center logo (tractor wheel with sheaf of wheat)
Issue 26 Launch Party in Amherst [VIDEO]
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Issue 25 of The Common is Here!

Issue 25 of The Common is Here!

May 8, 2023

 

Here are all the ways to experience Issue 25:Issue 25 cover: The Common's square dark logo over a scattering of smashed brown and white egg shells, on a pale blue background.


Click here to purchase your print or digital copy, starting at just $7.

Click here to browse the Table of Contents, including online exclusives.

Love Issue 25’s portfolio of stories and art from Kuwait? Donate to support The Common’s mission to feature new and underrepresented voices from around the world.

Interested in teaching Issue 25 in your class? Click here to explore your options and resources.

 

 

Issue 25 of The Common is Here!
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The 2022 Author Postcard Auction is Open!

The 2022 Author Postcard Auction is Open!

November 7, 2022 ,

It’s that time of year again: bid for a personalized, handwritten postcard from your favorite author in The Common’s ninth annual author postcard auction! The personalization of the postcards makes them fantastic gifts, just in time for the holidays. Online bidding is open now, and closes at noon on November 30th.

Join in on the fun this year for a chance to receive a postcard from New York Times-bestsellers, National Book Award-winners, Man Booker Prize finalists, and Pulitzer Prize-winners and finalists. In the past few years, authors have famously gone all out with their postcards: expect to receive anything from long letters to drawings and doodles to haikus. This year, we also have singer-songwriters, cartoonists, and more!

Participating authors include literary powerhouses and popular favorites such as Fran Lebowitz, David Sedaris, Alison Bechdel, Neil Gaiman, Donna Tartt, Andrew Sean Greer, Anthony Doerr, and George Saunders. We also have songwriters Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), Craig Finn (The Hold Steady), Natalie Merchant, and Amanda Shires (The Highwomen). We’ve even got New Yorker cartoonist Chris Ware! 

handwritten author postcards from Chris Bachelder and Anthony Doerr

Winning bids are tax-deductible donations. All proceeds go to The Common Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to publishing and promoting art and literature from global, diverse voices.

If you’re interested in supporting The Common but don’t want to bid, click here to donate. 

The 2022 Author Postcard Auction is Open!
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Call for Submissions: Writing from the Farmworker Community

Call for Submissions: Writing from the Farmworker Community

August 15, 2022 ,

The deadline for this call has been extended to February 17. 

The Common, in collaboration with guest co-editor Miguel M. Morales, will publish a portfolio of writing from the farmworker and farm laborer community: the migrant, seasonal, and often immigrant laborers who make up much of the US agricultural workforce. Submissions are now open.

Para leer este anuncio en español haga clic aquí.

collage of farmworker photos

Call for Submissions: Writing from the Farmworker Community
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Issue 23 Virtual Launch Party

Issue 23 Virtual Launch Party

April 18, 2022

The Common Spring Launch Party

Wednesday, May 4, 2022Image of Issue 23 cover (piece of toast on turquoise background).
5:00 pm
Via Zoom

On May 4th at 5pm EDT, join The Common for the virtual celebration of Issue 23! We welcome fiction writer Fernando Flores, poet Tina Cane, Palestinian writer Eyad Barghuthy, and Arabic translator Nashwa Gowanlock for brief readings and conversation about place, culture, and translation. The event will be hosted by the magazine’s editor in chief Jennifer Acker, in partnership with the Amherst College Creative Writing Center and Arts at Amherst Initiative. 

Please Register in Advance for the Virtual Event. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the event.

Register Here

 

Issue 23 Virtual Launch Party
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Craft Masterclasses: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry & Translation

Craft Masterclasses: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry & Translation

March 16, 2022

Blue image with title CRAFT MASTERCLASSES with THE COMMON with group headshots 

Give your writing a boost this spring. Join The Common for a series of craft classes with these literary luminaries.
 

    • Bruna Dantas Lobato: No Two Snowflakes Are Alike: How to Translate Style [register]

    • Karen Shepard on Fiction: The Children’s Hour [register]

    • Willie Perdomo on Poetry: The City and the Poet, the Street and the Poem [register]

    • Suketu Mehta on Nonfiction: Writing the City [register]

 
Each class includes a craft talk and Q&A with the guest author, generative exercises and discussion, and a take-home list of readings and writing prompts. Recordings will be available after the fact for participants who cannot attend the live event.
 
Each class is $125, or $85 for current subscribers or current and past Weekly Writes participants. 

 

Craft Masterclasses: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry & Translation
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Is Poetry Possible at the Moment History Stirs: Poets of Ukraine

Is Poetry Possible at the Moment History Stirs: Poets of Ukraine

March 9, 2022 ,

I ask
Half-awake
Is poetry possible
At the moment history stirs
Once its steps
Reverberate through every heart?

— From “Can there be poetry after” by Anastasia Afanasieva, translated by Kevin Vaughn and Maria Khotimsky

 

With the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, we at The Common have been reflecting on the powerful words of many Ukrainian poets who have appeared in our pages. In recent years their work has been rooted in conflict, as the country struggled first with self-determination and later with the Russian annexation of Crimea and, since 2014, with a Russian-incited war in the East. This focus lends a feeling of prescience and timeliness to their work now, even though most of these poems are not new. We hope you’ll make time to read and reflect on the work of these poets, as we all keep Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in our thoughts.

Is Poetry Possible at the Moment History Stirs: Poets of Ukraine
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