Isabel Meyers

Gandy Dancer (2015)

March 3, 2015 News and Events

Gandy Dancer reviews The Common, emphasizing a “tasteful unity that is certainly the result of the common thread.”

Topical Poetry: An Interview with Jonathan Moody

February 3, 2015 Interviews

MELODY NIXON interviews JONATHAN MOODY

Jonathan Moody

Jonathan Moody is a poet and professor. His first full-length collection, The Doomy Poems, deals with time and place through persona poems, and is described by Terrance Hayes as having an “innovative funkiness that transcends the ruckus and heartache of our modern world.” Moody’s second poetry collection, Olympic Butter Gold, won the 2014 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize and will be published in summer this year. His poem “Dear 2Pac” appears in Issue 08 of The Common, and his “Portrait of Hermes as a B-Boy,” “Kleosphobia,” and “Paranoid,” have all been featured at The Common Online. Melody Nixon caught up with Moody this winter, and between New Zealand and Texas they talked poetry activism, politics, Houston skyscrapers, and the “cosmopolitan radiance” of Downtown Pittsburgh.

Ask a Local: Renee Simms, University Place, WA

January 22, 2015 Interviews

With RENEE SIMMS

Name: Renee Simms

Current city: University Place, WA, which is a suburb five minutes outside of Tacoma

How long have you lived here: Since 2011

The Best American Poetry 2012

January 6, 2015 News and Events

The Best American Poetry 2012, ed. Mark Doty, included Mary Jo Salter’s “The Gods” and Honor Moore’s “Song,” both from The Common Issue 01.

Better Posture, a Longer Life, and Great Sex: An Interview with Diane Cook

January 6, 2015 Interviews

S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews DIANE COOK

Diane Cook

Diane Cook’s debut short-story collection Man V. Nature was recently published by HarperCollins. The New York Times called it a book of “great beauty and strangeness.” Cook is a former producer on NPR’s “This American Life” and a graduate of the Graduate Writing Program at Columbia University. She currently lives in Oakland, California where she is at work on a novel. S. Tremaine Nelson talked with Cook about writing “unnerving” stories, her least favorite author, and the many perks of novel writing.

The Review Review (2013)

January 5, 2015 News and Events

The Review Review gives Issue 04 five stars, saying it “seamlessly blends style, presentation, and experimentation with pieces that celebrate the universal human experiences of love, loneliness, heartbreak, and anxiety.”

Like Fire (2011)

January 5, 2015 News and Events

Like Fire welcomes The Common as “a fresh contender in the lovely summertime stream of literary journals, one that’s absolutely worth taking a look at.”