Sam Spratford

SamSpratford

Podcast: Julia Sanches on “The Advice”

January 31, 2025 Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

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Transcript: Julia Sanches

Translator Julia Sanches speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about translating “The Advice,” a story by Irene Pujadas, which appears in The Common’s fall issue in a portfolio of writing by contemporary Catalan women. Julia talks about her translation process, and the importance of capturing the tone and style of a piece, like the understated absurdist humor in “The Advice.” Julia also discusses how she approaches collaboration with other translators, how she chooses the books and stories she wants to translate, and how starting her career at a literary agency gave her a crash course in the behind-the-scenes of publishing.

A Tyranny of Dreams: Review of Proper Imposters

January 28, 2025 Reviews

Reviewed by SAM SPRATFORD

In Proper Imposters, Panhandler Books compiles four novellas from authors who are attuned to the mystical nature of doubles, a timeless form, and who hold them up to the contradictions of our moment, the paradoxes and counterparts on which our societies rest. MAURICIO MONTIEL FIGUEIRAS, JEFF PARKER, CHAYA BHUVANESWAR, AND JASON OCKERT each spin gripping tales of doppelgangers, pairs whose likeness in body or spirit fades in and out of focus. These are stories of concealment, intentional or not, and revelations of often melodramatic proportions. When the authors align these pieces just right, it resembles the dazzling effect of a hall of mirrors. Each author manages, at various times, to pierce through narrative’s typical strictures into the world of dreams, where fantastical images diagnose with overwhelming clarity the ills of our time.

What We’re Reading: January 2025

January 24, 2025 Reviews

Curated by SAM SPRATFORD

As we’re finding our footing in 2025 and, in the U.S., shoring up against new political realities, January has been pervaded by a sense of uncertainty. The books our community is reading right now seem to respond to this feeling, in areas of life spanning from assimilation to cooking anxiety. Read on for recommendations from our contributors AFTON MONTGOMERY, HEMA PADHU, and ADRIENNE SU that just might help to stabilize your spirits—or, at the very least, provide some quality distraction.

Miriam Ungerer’s Good Cheap Food and Margaret Eby’s You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible; recommended by Issue 28 Poet Adrienne Su

When working on my last book of poems, Peach State (2021), I often wrote my way to the kitchen: writing about a dish made me want to cook it. These days, I’m cooking my way to the proverbial typewriter. I read about food. Then I cook something I’ve read about, and the process nudges me to fill a page.

In fall, the persimmon trees light their lanterns

January 22, 2025 Dispatches

By CHRISTY TENDING

Beppu-shi, Oita Prefecture, Japan

From beyond the waves, looking back at the shore, civilization betrays itself. The aging amusement park—its sign hasn’t been illuminated in years and the ferris wheel creaks under the weight of a glance—still perches on the hill. There are hotels, a communications tower, a shopping mall: each bows its head to the context of an environment that cannot wait to overtake it. The wooden faces of homes have settled themselves in intimate relationship: in or among the bamboo, against the mountain, above the valley, over the sea.

The Common to Receive $12,500 Award from the National Endowment for the Arts

January 14, 2025 News and Events

Amherst, MA —The Common is pleased to announce its ninth award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The award approved for 2025 will support The Common in publishing and promoting global writing, thereby broadening American audiences’ exposure to international voices, and in elevating the work of debut and emerging authors.

December 2024 Poetry Feature #2: New Work from our Contributors

December 27, 2024 Poetry

New work by LEAH FLAX BARBER, ROBERT CORDING, PETER FILKINS

Table of Contents:

Robert Cording, “In Beaufort”
Leah Flax Barber, “School Poem” and “Cordelia’s No”
Peter Filkins, “Trains”

In Beaufort
By Robert Cording

At a rented air B&B, I am sitting on a swing
placed here just for me it seems,
or just to carry off my worries and sorrows
as I rock slowly, back and forth, taking in
the shifting colors of the Broad River that circles
this marsh pocketed with cut-outs of water
and long inlets that circle round and round
as if it were one of those spiritual labyrinths
that bring calm as the center is reached.

The Most-Read Pieces of 2024

December 21, 2024 News and Events

Before we close out another busy year of publishing, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the unique, resonant, and transporting pieces that made 2024 memorable. The Common published over 175 stories, essays, poems, interviews, and features online and in print in 2024. Below, you can browse a list of the ten most-read pieces of 2024 to get a taste of what left an impact on readers.

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January 2024 Poetry Feature: Part I, with work by Adrienne Su, Eleanor Stanford, Kwame Opoku-Duku, and William Fargason

“I wrote this poem on Holy Saturday, which historically is the day after Jesus was crucified, and the day before he was resurrected. That Spring, I was barely out of a nervous breakdown in which I had intense suicidal ideation … The moments of quiet during a time like that take on more meaning somehow, reminders I was still alive. And that day, that Saturday, I saw a bee.”

—William Fargason on “Holy Saturday”

Review: Kittentits

December 19, 2024 Reviews

By HOLLY WILSON

Reviewed by OLGA ZILBERBOURG

Molly is a badass. Obvious, isn’t it, from the novel’s title? Kittentits. That’s her, Molly. She’s a motherless white ten-year-old kid, living in Calumet City, Michigan. It’s 1992, and she’s obsessed with attending the Chicago World’s Fair, about to open downtown.

Before she gets there, Molly comes to idolize a woman who tried to kill her conjoined twin; runs away from home to Chicago’s South Side neighborhood of Bronzeville; meets an elderly polio patient living inside an iron lung who gives séances; and befriends an African-American ghost boy and artist, Demarcus. Together, Molly and Demarcus hatch a plan of necromancy to commune with the ghosts of their dead mothers. They camp out at the Fair for weeks, waiting for New Year’s Eve to perform the ritual.

Holiday Reads 2024

December 17, 2024 Reviews

Curated by SAM SPRATFORD

Exploring migration from the perspective of plants; mystical historical fiction that will transport you from New England to Haiti; and one woman’s chance to do life over again.

We revisited our community’s favorite reads from throughout the year and compiled a list of memoirs, essay collections, novels, and creative nonfiction works to inspire a diverse holiday reading list, or kick off your reading plans for the new year. All of these titles were originally highlighted in our “What We’re Reading” and Book Reviews columns, and we think they deserve a second spotlight. Read on for recommendations from the Phoenix desert, the Indian subcontinent, the seaside, and more.

Morgan Parker’s You Get What You Pay For

A poetic memoir-in-essays about Parker’s struggle to live freely amid the omnipresent legacy of enslavement in America. Beginning with her childhood as the only Black girl in a conservative, religious town, Parker moves between wide-ranging topics—including everything from cop killings, to plantation tours, to therapy and Jay-Z—but frames it all with the motif of the slave ship.

What We’re Reading: December 2024

December 13, 2024 Reviews

Curated by SAM SPRATFORD

If you’re in need of a deep breath amid the holiday frenzy, look no further. This month, Issue 28 poets and longtime TC contributors OLENA JENNINGS and ELIZABETH HAZEN bring you three recommendations that force you to slow down and observe. Hazen’s picks provide an intimate window into the paradoxical, tragic, and sometimes ridiculous characters that inhabit our world, while Jennings’ holds up a mirror to readers, asking them to meditate on the act of viewing itself.

Chantal V. Johnson’s Post-Traumatic and Kate Greathead’s The Book of George; recommended by Issue 28 Contributor Elizabeth Hazen

Typically, I have a few books going at once, and I am almost always at the very least reading one physical book and listening to another. Often, the pairings reveal interesting connections, and my most recent reads—Kate Greathead’s latest, The Book of George, and Chantal V. Johnson’s debut, Post-Traumatic—did not disappoint.

Both books are contemporary, the former out just this October, the latter in 2022, and feature protagonists who are deeply flawed but trying to figure out who they are. They hail from starkly different backgrounds, though, and this determines the starkly different difficulties they encounter as they navigate adulthood.