News & Events | Page 147 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

Practicing Disaster

July 17, 2019 Dispatches

H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Oregon

1. Avalanche

To practice the quick slipping away of ground beneath our feet, geologists built a second mountain. This one is a tender surface, fitted with sensors, and rigged for data. On sunny, cold mornings, to practice how helpless, they measure piles to drop — peat, gravel, water-saturated masses of organic matter, combinations to mimic what might happen — and let them fall into chaos. To practice the moment of shock, they invite everyone like a performance. The scientists on their lunch break gather, promising to stand quietly for five minutes after the stopwatch starts, for the duration of the drop, to watch how it all tumbles, gaining speed, no gasping no matter what it looks like, and for ten whole minutes after. This is the most difficult part. Practicing the quiet after.

“I Hope I’m Not a Moth”: Lindsay Wong on Coming of Age Through Memoir

July 15, 2019 Interviews

MARNI BERGER interviews LINDSAY WONG

Lindsay Wong’s debut memoir The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018) was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, selected for the 2019 edition of Canada Reads (where it was defended by fashion personality Joe Zee), longlisted for the Leacock Medal for humor, and awarded the Hubert Evans Nonfiction Prize. Wong holds a BFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University. Her short stories and nonfiction have appeared in Apogee Journal, No Tokens, Ricepaper, and The Fiddlehead, and she has earned residencies from The Studios of Key West, Caldera Arts, and the Historic Joy Kogawa House, to name a few.

In this interview, long-time friends Marni Berger and Lindsay Wong span Portland, Maine and Vancouver, British Columbia via the beauty of the internet (as they have for the better part of a decade). They cover topics from sleeping on a mattress beside your grandmother during Hurricane Sandy to visiting your mother’s haunted playground in Hong Kong; and from avoiding self-promotion on social media to coming of age while writing a memoir.

Essential Summer Reads 2019

July 13, 2019 News and Events

With July well underway, we’ve put together a list of transportive pieces that encapsulate the spirit of summer—the dust above the country roads, the coolness of the waterfronts, the anticipation of autumn, and of course, the sticky, melting sweetness of ice cream. Take a trip through space and time with these summery selections.

The Mapmaker

July 11, 2019 Essays

By KAREN KAO

The first time I went to China was in 1984. I didn’t need a map. You could only travel in groups back then with a government handler to navigate the way and guide thoughts. We travelled from Beijing to Xi’an in a decommissioned military airplane reserved for the exclusive use of Party leaders and foreign tourists. From Xi’An to Luoyang we took a train that required eight hours to cover a distance that now needs just half that.

Rubrica

July 3, 2019 Dispatches

By RITA CIRESI

Venice, Italy

I bought it thirty years ago on my first visit to Italy, in a cramped bookbinding shop tucked on a dark, narrow alley behind Piazza San Marco. I paid for it in lire—heavy coins that bore the images of grapevines and olive branches, and oversized pastel bills printed with portraits of Guglielmo Marconi and Maria Montessori.

My address book, covered in blue marbled paper, is the size of 3 x 5 index card. The flyleaf is stamped with the symbol of Venice: a winged lion. The lion looks proudly out, as if—in a city where many go to deliberately get lost in the enchanting maze—he knows exactly where he is going.

June 2019 Poetry Feature: Eleanor Stanford

June 28, 2019 Poetry

Four Poems By ELEANOR STANFORD

Contents

Everything that exists in any world exists in the actual world
There is nothing so far away from us as not to be part of our world
The world we live in is a very inclusive thing
“Missing” universals that ought to be possible

Call for Submissions from and about the Lusosphere

June 22, 2019 News and Events

In fall 2020, The Common, in partnership with the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, will publish a portfolio from the Lusosphere: Portugal and its colonial and linguistic diaspora. We hope to include writers from and works about the many countries and communities that make up this diverse diaspora. Writers need not speak Portuguese or live in a Portuguese-speaking country to submit.

We seek pieces in the genres of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid works. Pieces may be written originally in English or Portuguese. If written originally in Portuguese, please provide an English-language sample of at least 30% of the piece.

Submissions open July 1 ~~and close on November 15, 2019.~~ ~~Early submissions are very much encouraged, as we will accept pieces until the portfolio is full.~~ Deadline extended to November 22nd, 2019!

Submit here via Submittable.

Nina Sudhakar Begins New Role as Book Reviews Editor

June 21, 2019 News and Events

The Common is excited to announce Nina Sudhakar as its new Book Reviews Editor. She has served as The Common’s Dispatches Editor since July 2018 and has been a submissions reader since September 2017. She will continue to edit dispatches as well as reviews.

Nina Sudhakar is the author of the poetry chapbooks Matriarchetypes (winner of the 2017 Bird’s Thumb Poetry Chapbook Contest), and Embodiments (forthcoming from Sutra Press in summer 2019). Her work has appeared in, among other places, The Offing, Ecotone, and Midnight Breakfast, and been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry. A graduate of Amherst College (BA) and Georgetown University (JD/MSFS), she currently lives in Chicago.

On her new position, Sudhakar says, “Working for The Common over the past two years—as a prose reader and currently as Dispatches Editor—has been an absolute joy. I’m so excited to take on the role of Books Reviews Editor and continue helping our team bring exciting, thought-provoking and transporting work to our readers and the literary community.”

Browse Nina’s publications and learn more about her at www.ninasudhakar.com.

She can be reached at bookreviews@thecommononline.org.

The Art of Grief: ‘Windows and Mirrors’

June 19, 2019 Essays

By ROBERT F. SOMMER

“Con mortuis in lingua mortua.”

—Modeste Mussorgsky

Blood seeps through the gauze on Salima’s foot. It’s what we notice first: the dark, rusty seepage a sharp contrast to the pastels of her pajamas and room. She’s thirteen, we learn, but the distant look in her eyes belongs to someone much older. She sits squat on the bed, chin resting on her knee. She seems mindless of her burns. Her mother and sister also survived, but three others in her family were killed when the American helicopter opened fire on their tent in Kandahar.

Offerings

June 19, 2019 Dispatches

By JANE WONG

Matawan, New Jersey

Over and over, I dig thin flower stems into the earth, as if mending a hole in an old shirt. The earth buckles at my persistence. I imagine the worms, deep in the ground, ducking each stem in slow, pink frenzy. The flowers are from Safeway along Route 18—dip-dyed daisy petals in blue and pink food coloring. It’s strange to return these gaudy flowers back to the soil. But they were the only ones we could find in the store that weren’t browning at the edges. If you’re going to bring flowers for the dead, they better not be dead themselves.