Isabel Meyers

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11 Questions with Richard Ford

April 15, 2021 Interviews

ALEXANDER BISLEY interviews RICHARD FORD

Talking to Richard Ford, the 76-year-old author of The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and Between Them, provides some hope, a feeling of being somewhat consoled. The great Southern writer is considered and insightful, with that courtly Mississippi inflection. Evoking his classic A Multitude of Sins, Ford’s latest short story collection Sorry for Your Trouble proves he still has gas in the tank.

Richard Ford is the author of the New York Times bestseller Canada. His story collections include the bestseller Let Me Be Frank with You, and Rock Springs. His novel Wildlife was adapted into a 2018 film of the same name. He is winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Prix Femina in France, the 2019 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and the Princess of Asturias Award in Spain. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, he now lives in Boothbay, Maine, with his wife, Kristina Ford. Sorry for Your Trouble is out now from Ecco.

During the days leading up to President Biden’s inauguration, Ford and Alexander Bisley discussed sport, place, process and America’s future.

April 2021 Friday Reads

April 2, 2021 Reviews

Curated by ISABEL MEYERS

Amidst the warmer days and rainy weather, we at The Common are busy preparing to release our spring issue. In this month’s Friday Reads, we’re hearing from our Issue 21 contributors on what books have been inspiring and encouraging them through the long, dark winter. Read their selections, on everything from immigration to embracing loneliness in pandemic times, and pre-order your copy of the upcoming issue here.

Recommendations: The Poetry of Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke, Transit by Anna Seghers, Stroke By Stroke by Henri Michaux, By the Lake by John McGahern.

Badge of Honor

March 16, 2021 Essays

By SUSAN CHOI

With thanks to Morgan Jerkins

When I was sixteen years old, I had a relationship with a man who was twice my age, thirty-two. He was white and brunet, more attractive than conventionally handsome, with a slightly hooked nose that lends him, in memory, an appearance of far greater maturity than I associate with thirty-two now that I’ve passed that age by more years than what separate the man’s age from mine. But to paraphrase the writer Stefan Hertmans, our memories age along with us. Regardless of the appearance of my erstwhile lover’s nose it’s inevitable that in memory he would possess the remote gravitas of a person in late middle age, a person who might be my parent or professor or boss. The impression is compounded by his name, an old-fashioned man’s name even then, as if he’d stepped out of the 1940s. He even owned a fedora, mouse-colored, soft as velvet, its untended crown reverted to a slightly dented dome as if it hoped to be a homburg. I admired that hat so much in the time I spent with him he finally gave it to me when I left home for college, after which I never saw him again.

Writers on Writing: Frances Richey

March 10, 2021 Interviews

This interview is the sixth in a new series, Writers on Writing, which focuses on craft and process. The series is part of The Common’s 10th anniversary celebration.

Read Richey’s March 2020 Poetry Feature

Frances Richey headshot Frances Richey is the author of two poetry collections: The Warrior (Viking Penguin 2008), The Burning Point (White Pine Press 2004), and the chapbook, Voices of the Guard (Clackamas Community College 2010). She teaches an on-going poetry writing class at Himan Brown Senior Program at the 92nd Street Y in NYC, and she is the poetry editor for upstreet Literary Magazine. She was poetry editor for Bellevue Literary Review from 2004-2008. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from: The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, Plume, Gulf Coast, Salmagundi, Salamander, Blackbird, River Styx, and Woman’s Day, and her poems have been featured on NPR, PBS NewsHour and Verse Daily. Most recently she was a finalist for The National Poetry Series for her manuscript, “On The Way Here.” She lives in New York City.

Writers on Writing: David Moloney

February 11, 2021 Interviews

This interview is the fifth in a new series, Writers on Writing, which focuses on craft and process. The series is part of The Common’s 10th anniversary celebration.

Read Moloney’s Issue 19 story, “Counsel.”

David Moloney worked in the Hillsborough County Department of Corrections, New Hampshire, from 2007 to 2011. He received a BA in English and creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he now teaches. He lives north of Boston with his family.

Friday Reads: February 2021

February 5, 2021 Reviews

Curated by ISABEL MEYERS

We’re starting 2021 with a Friday Reads packed with recommendations set everywhere from the wilderness of British Columbia to modern day Nigeria. Recommenders from the TC team reflect on how their recent reading tackles issues of gender and sexual identity, strained familial relationships, and of course, a classic murder mystery or two.

Recommendations: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, The Reconception of Marie by Teresa Carmody, The Wild Heavens by Sarah Louise Butler, The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

E.A. Robinson Leaves by Rail

February 3, 2021 Dispatches

By ABBIE KIEFER

Gardiner, Maine

Raw granite and brick, hip roof like a helmet. At its height, it hummed: seventeen trains daily, lumbering in along the river. I imagine E.A. here with his ticket and his trunk. With his back to the brick, listening for a whistle.

Now the depot is a cannabis dispensary. They keep records in the ticket booth, make brownies in the basement. Preservationists call this adaptive reuse.

January 2021 Poetry Feature

January 28, 2021 Poetry

By SUPHIL LEE PARK, RICHIE HOFMANN, KAREN SKOLFIELD, CLIFF FORSHAW, T.J MCLEMORE

Contents:

Suphil Lee Park | Hua Tou

Richie Hofmann | City of Violent Wind

Karen Skolfield | Gettsyburg Relics for Sale

Cliff Forshaw | Parthenon Bas-Relief

T.J. McLemore | Sunday, October 23, 4004 BCE

Review: Three Apples Fell From the Sky

January 26, 2021 Reviews

BY NARINE ABGARYAN

(Translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden)

reviewed by OLGA ZILBERBOURG

A brave writer begins her novel with the deathbed. Instead of hooking a reader the way the proverbial gun on the wall might, opening with a death scene threatens her with the inevitable backstory.

Luckily, Narine Abgaryan is both a brave and an experienced writer. Three Apples Fell from the Sky is her fifth full-length novel, which won Russia’s prestigious Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award in 2016. Maine-based Lisa C. Hayden translated this novel for Oneworld, and after a COVID19-based delay, the book was released in the UK in August 2020. The novel opens with Anatolia Sevoyants, the protagonist, as she lies down “to breathe her last.” Soon, though, we learn that while Anatolia fully intends to die, life is far from finished with her.