News & Events | Page 151 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

LitFest Friday Reads: February 2019

February 15, 2019 Reviews

It’s that time again—The Common and Amherst College will be hosting the fourth annual LitFest at the end of the month. For three days, February 28^th to March 2^nd, award-winning authors, poets, and critics will descend on Amherst to read, discuss, teach, and celebrate great writing. This year the lineup includes two National Book Award finalists, two Pulitzer Prize winners, and a New York Times bestseller. View the full list of participating writers and a calendar of events here.

Stingray

February 13, 2019 Dispatches

By KASIA VAN SCHAIK

Little Bay, New Zealand

Everyone wears white here. Girls with white dogs in their arms rush towards the water. Women smear white ointments across the backs of their knees. Swimmers crouch over white caps.

Friends have gathered halfway up the beach, my father’s friends. Beside him sits a woman who was once so beautiful she was named the Rag Queen and transported on a float through the city. They crowd together under the Pohutukawa trees, the family and the extended family visiting from Europe. She waves to me. From across the sand I hear my father say “water lilies”…

From Where the Dead Sit Talking

February 12, 2019 Fiction

Excerpt from the novel Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson

CHAPTER ONE

I have been unhappy for many years now.

I have seen in the faces of young people walking down the street a resemblance to people who died during my childhood.

Multiple Geographies: an Interview with Helen Benedict

February 4, 2019 Interviews

MELODY NIXON interviews HELEN BENEDICT

Helen Benedict is the author of seven novels and five works of nonfiction. A professor of journalism at Columbia University, Benedict spends her time between New York City and upstate New York, where her latest novel, Wolf Season, is set—though the characters’ lives encompass Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the US. Wolf Seasonwas selected as a 2018 Great Group Read by the Women’s National Book Association.

As the seasons changed from fall to winter, Melody Nixon spoke with Benedict about her newest book, the “effects of war on the human heart,” Benedict’s path to social justice, and the way forward with the crisis of tolerance.

Ask a Local: Mara Pastor, Ponce, Puerto Rico

January 31, 2019 Interviews

Answers appear first in Spanish, and next in English translation.

Your name: Mara Pastor

Current city or town: Ponce, Puerto Rico

How long have you lived here: Desde enero del 2016. / Since January 2016.

Three words to describe the climate: Caluroso. Húmedo. Mucho. / Hot. Humid. Very.

The Camera Obscura at Castelo São Jorge

January 30, 2019 Dispatches

By KRISTINA FAUST

Lisbon, Portugal

January 2019 Poetry Feature

January 25, 2019 Poetry

New Poems by Our Contributors

ELIZABETH METZGER | “Say Nothing”

MATTHEW GELLMAN | “Luna Moth”

PATRICK RIEDY | “Vacant with beauty”

| “To last a lifetime safety begins in the mind”

DENISE DUHAMEL | “Crème de la Femme”

The Common’s 10 Most-Read Pieces of 2018

January 18, 2019 News and Events

As The Common office continues to anticipate the exciting work we plan to share in 2019 both online and in our next issues, it seems like a great time to reflect on the pieces that made 2018 just as exciting for us. See what resonated with readers the most in 2018 by browsing the list below of our most-read works of the past year: they range from fiction to essays, interviews, and more!

Ann Arbor Diptych

January 16, 2019 Dispatches

By AVERY FARMER

Elbel Field, 2018.

Like an orgy—or a fight. Legs collide with legs; strangers struggle around each other, into each other. A collective gasp clutches them all together. One, shirtless, leads the ball down the field, stumbles, and loses control of it. Now the ball leads him and leads his opponent into him. The two collide without a sound, the crash dampened by their flesh. Everybody stops to watch them battle for the ball. When it spills free, the first man gains control and rolls it across an invisible line between two heaps of t-shirts. Half the players cry in ecstasy. Half sigh in frustration. For a few seconds before this, nobody breathed at all.

Intuitive Nonfiction: An Interview with Courtney Kersten

January 14, 2019 Interviews

THAÏS MILLER INTERVIEWS COURTNEY KERSTEN

Courtney Kersten’s work been featured in Brevity, The Normal School, River Teeth, Hotel Amerika, DIAGRAM, The Sonora Review, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. In 2018, the University of Wisconsin Press published her debut memoir, Daughter in Retrograde.

Thaïs Miller met with Kersten on the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz, where they are both pursuing PhDs in Literature with a Creative/Critical Writing Concentration. Astrology plays a large role in Kersten’s memoir, so they decided to conduct the interview after a tarot card reading.