Sofia Belimova

sbelimova

Unique Craft Masterclasses with The Common

March 26, 2021 News and Events

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

- Jim Shepard: Generating Fiction from History [register]
- Vievee Francis and Curtis Bauer: Writing Toward a Poetry Chapbook or Collection [register]
- W. Ralph Eubanks: How to Turn a Place into an Essay [register]

Each class includes a craft talk and Q&A with the guest author, generative exercises and discussion in breakout sessions, and a take-home list of readings and writing prompts. Students also receive exclusive access to a free “Behind the Scenes” session about what literary magazine editors look for in submissions. Recordings will be available after the fact for participants who cannot attend the live event.

Each class is $125, or $75 for current subscribers or past Weekly Writes participants.

Pushcart Prize Editors Nominate 8 Pieces from The Common

March 25, 2021 News and Events

We are excited to announce that the Pushcart Prize’s contributing editors have nominated eight pieces from The Common‘s 2020 publications, in print and online! The Pushcart Prize celebrates outstanding works of literature produced by small-press writers; each of these nominations are exceptional works of art that take fresh and memorable perspectives on the modern sense of place. Congratulations to our amazing contributors!

Issue 19

Elizabeth A. I. Powell, “Letter from American Airspace” (Poetry)

Dana Alsamsam, “Love Poem With Forgetting” (Poetry)

Tara Skurtu, “Offering” (Poetry)

Issue 20

Joanne Dominique Dwyer, “No Alphabet” (Poetry)

Bruce Snider, “The News” (Poetry)

Katherine Vaz, “The Treasure Hunt of August Dias” (Fiction)

Oona Patrick, “Nobody Goes to Mértola” (Essay)

Online

Nick Maione, “July on South Street (AEAE)” (Dispatch)

The Old Man of Kusumpur

March 11, 2021 Fiction, Translation

By AMAR MITRA

Translated from the Bengali by ANISH GUPTA

Fakirchand of Kusumpur set out on his way to meet the Big Man. A bundle of meagre belongings hung on his back from one end of a cane stick that rested on his shoulder. Old Fakirchand walked with a slight stoop.

It was moments before sunrise, and the March morning was soft and cool with a genial air and the earth still pleasant to walk on. The cocks were still crowing. Swarms of little children were already out in the open. Old Fakirchand walked slowly, as though measuring each step, and raised both hands to his forehead in obeisance or ‘pranam’ to the rising sun. Yes, his eyes felt better and so did his body. In the brisk morning air, he touched his rheumy eyes with his cold hands.

LitFest 2021 Excerpt: Interior Chinatown

February 23, 2021 Fiction

By CHARLES YU

Amherst College’s sixth annual literary festival will take place virtually this year, from Thursday, February 25 to Sunday, February 28. Among the guests are 2020 National Book Award fiction winner Charles Yu and longlist nominee Megha Majumdar. The Common is pleased to reprint a short excerpt from Yu’s novel Interior Chinatown here.

Join Megha Majumdar and Charles Yu in conversation with host Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint (visiting writer at Amherst College) on Friday, February 26 from 7 to 8pm.

Register and see the full list of LitFest events here.

The Language of the Body

February 17, 2021 Dispatches

By SARA ELKAMEL

Image of tents in a Bedouin-style camp at the Wadi Rum desert in southern Jordan

Tents in a Bedouin-style camp at the Wadi Rum desert in southern Jordan. Courtesy: Soraya Ghezelbash.

Wadi Rum, Jordan
for Yvonne

We pull the black of Rum over our eyes
like skin. God’s earth is vast, vast, vast—but by day

she wrapped her limbs around my limbs and drew
my air. I follow her into the dark, consider saying: Please,

I don’t know what you need—but all I see is red.
At the foot of the dunes I push her, soft as the sin

that tips the scale. I run away like a ghost, a demon, a silent drum
in the faultless dark. Not a quiver of light around my bones.

Neighbors

February 16, 2021 Fiction

By NICK STORY

The Rectangle

When my marriage ended I moved to an apartment building that was mostly uninhabited. I never saw the other tenants. There were traces of them here and there—a sock left in a dryer, muted weeping down the hall, ambulances flashing out front—but I couldn’t have told you what any of my neighbors looked like.

There was a serious cockroach infestation in my unit. In the kitchen, the roaches chewed through boxes of crackers, fresh fruit, bags of rice. They crawled over the counters, peeked up through the sink drain, and burned in the oven. In the middle of the night, I’d spot them on the ceiling, circling the kitchen light like planets in a model solar system.

Pandemic Diaries

February 9, 2021 Essays

By JINJIN XU

#1
New York City March 17, 2020

For the past few days, I’ve vacillated between panic, helplessness, and feeling like a prophetic, burning witch. I spent the first two months of this year watching the pandemic take hold of China—from the arrest of Dr. Li WenLiang for spreading “false rumors,” to Wuhan and the whole country going into lockdown, to my friends mailing masks back home to their families in China—sitting in my NYC apartment as the virus swept across Korea, Iran, Italy, making its way across the globe towards me.

Translation: A Trip to La Paz

February 4, 2021 Essays, Translation

Essay by HEBE UHART

Translated from the Spanish by ANNA VILNER

Essay appears in both Spanish and English.

Translator’s Note

Hebe Uhart’s “A Trip to La Paz” is delightfully misleading in that we never arrive at our destination; we never see the city that touches the clouds. This essay is concerned with a different kind of beauty—the getting there, the buzzing potential of travel. It encapsulates why we embark on grueling car rides, on flights, on long train journeys, in the first place.

Taking the Waters

January 5, 2021 Essays

By MARTHA COOLEY

Sulfur: odor of rotten eggs, matchhead, volcanoes, gunpowder, and Lucifer down there in Hell’s fire and brimstone.

Also the smell that pervades thermal spas. Along with minerals such as sodium chloride, iodine, and calcium, sulfur is a key component of many therapeutic waters. Linked as it is with fire and corrosion, sulfur also has a storied association with the healing of numerous ailments, particularly respiratory and skin-related ones.

Willie Perdomo To Join Editorial Staff of The Common

December 7, 2020 News and Events

(Amherst, Mass. — December 7, 2020)— The Common, the award-winning literary journal based at Amherst College, has hired acclaimed poet Willie Perdomo as its new Interviews Editor. With publishing experience stretching back twenty-five years, Perdomo currently teaches English at Philips Exeter Academy.

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

Jim Shepard: Generating Fiction from History [register]

Vievee Francis and Curtis Bauer: Writing Toward a Poetry Chapbook or Collection [register]

W. Ralph Eubanks: How to Turn a Place into an Essay [register]

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