The Common @ the National Book Foundation’s Why Reading Matters Conference

National Book Foundation logo
Are you an educator? Do you work with students? Join us as The Common editors present at The National Book Foundation’s third annual Why Reading Matters conference on June 7 at St. Francis College in Brooklyn. 

A man presents at a literary conferenceEditor in Chief Jennifer Acker and Associate Editor and Director of The Common in the Classroom Elizabeth Witte will be joined by Katherine Hill, a TC contributor and Assistant Professor of English at Adelphi University, for a panel discussion: Reaching from There to Here: broadening student perspectives through place-focused literature.

Check out more details on the conference here. TC readers receive a 15% discount on registration with the code: NBFFRIEND

The Common @ the National Book Foundation’s Why Reading Matters Conference
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The Globe

By SEAN GILL

Berlin’s Deutsches Historisches Museum

Berlin, Germany

Inside Berlin’s Deutsches Historisches Museum, there is a quiet passageway which serves as a spatial juncture between the Nazi era and the Soviet one. There is only one exhibit in this place: an enormous metal globe, encircled by wooden framing and encased in glass. Its lands are tinted municipal yellow-brown, its seas faded cyan. This particular globe may once have belonged to Ribbentrop, Goebbels, or perhaps Hitler himself. This is not a shock; Hitler’s actual desk rests in the preceding room, about forty meters behind you. You have therefore already experienced such a flood of icy association; an anxious dread similar to when you behold a steep precipice, or pass by a policeman toting an automatic weapon.

The Globe
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On Noticing: an interview with Kirstin Allio

Kirstin Allio headshot

ISABEL MEYERS interviews KIRSTIN ALLIO

Kirstin Allio is the author of the short story collection Clothed, Female Figure and the novel Garner, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her latest novel, Buddhism for Western Children, will be the inaugural novel from The Iowa Review Series, a new imprint from University of Iowa Press, coming out in the fall of 2018. In this month’s interview, Kirstin Allio and The Common’s editorial assistant Isabel Meyers discuss motherhood, childhood memories, and society’s fascination with religious cults.

On Noticing: an interview with Kirstin Allio
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Bella Figura

By JULIA LICHTBLAUA green garden viewed through a fence

The best garden in Brooklyn is like Fred Astaire
Charming but inaccessible.
A private creation for public viewing.
I look down into it from my living room,
Its spilling vines and spruce hedge-tops lend cachet to my garden.
Yet a high fence keeps us
Properly separate.
As does the rusty chain link gate on the street side,
which is only opened for
Tree-trimming and the like.

Bella Figura
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Take Me With You

By MARCIA DESANCTIS

Morocco

Morocco

An hour from Marrakesh, a car delivers my friend and me to Imlil for a day-hike in the High Atlas Mountains. Judging by the heavy-gauge North Face jacket and ice-climbing boots worn by our guide Abderrahim, it’s clear I’ve miscalculated trekking in Morocco in February. I scan the snowy peaks and wonder how I will fare in my paltry jacket and no hat. And there he is. He sits patiently, about five feet from me, looking timid and cold. His head tilts downward, and although there is no eye contact, I sense he knows I’m there. I’m overtaken by a swell of tenderness and yearning, and I say to my friend, “I think this guy just AirDropped me his heart.” 

Take Me With You
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