News & Events | Page 178 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

Inventory

February 12, 2018 Fiction

Come hear 2017 National Book Award finalist Carmen Maria Machado speak as part of LitFest 2018 on Thursday, March 1st at Amherst College. For more event details, click here!

One girl. We lay down next to each other on the musty rug in her basement. Her parents were upstairs; we told them we were watching Jurassic Park. “I’m the dad, and you’re the mom,” she said. I pulled up my shirt, she pulled up hers, and we just stared at each other. My heart fluttered below my belly button, but I worried about daddy longlegs and her parents finding us. I still have never seen Jurassic Park. I suppose I never will, now.

The Thing That Would Unmake You: an Interview with Carmen Maria Machado

February 11, 2018 Interviews

HILARY LEICHTER interviews CARMEN MARIA MACHADO

Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded numerous fellowships and residencies from organizations that include the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the Yaddo Corporation, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Her memoir, House in Indiana, is forthcoming in 2019 from Graywolf Press. Carmen Maria Machado will be at Amherst College on March 1st at 7:30 for a National Book Awards on Campus Conversation, which is a part of LitFest 2018.

This summer Hilary Leichter met with Machado at her home in Philadelphia, where Machado is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Common Receives $10,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

February 7, 2018 News and Events

The Common will receive its third grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2018. The Art Works grant of $10,000 will be awarded to The Common to help publish more and diverse writers, expand its readership, and also support The Common in the Classroom initiatives.

“We are thrilled to receive our third NEA grant as The Common heads into its 8th year of publication. The grant will go a long way to increase the diversity of authors and literary works published on our website and in print,” says Founder and Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker. “It will also support teachers and students who use The Common in the Classroom by expanding the library of online tools and resources.”

The Common staff and interns. Left to right, standing Debbie Wen, Flavia Martinez, Managing Editor Emily Everett, Isabel Meyers. Seated Sunna Juhn, Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker, Madeline Ruoff. Not pictured: Julia Pike, Nayereh Doosti.

Plot vs. Story

February 2, 2018 Essays

By SUSAN SCARF MERRELL

I think in words, not images, which I imagine is a form of dementia rarely studied by brain scientists—it’s a disadvantage when looking at a map or a set of architectural plans, and I have long believed it also to be a disadvantage when building the big complex geography of even the most pared-down fictional world.

The Common’s Nominations for the Pushcart Prize

January 30, 2018 News and Events

We at The Common are proud to announce our nominations for the 2018 Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, an accolade bestowed upon small-press writers for works of outstanding writing and literary talent. Each of our nominations represents this culmination of talent and ingenuity alongside the celebration of a daring and modern sense of place.

January 2018 Poetry Feature

January 26, 2018 Poetry

NEW POETS FOR THE NEW YEAR
This month we welcome poets new to our pages: JESSICA LANAY and MARLIN M. JENKINS

JESSICA LANAY

Harriet Hemings Meets Red Peter at The Russian Tea Room

“[…] as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of his own species.” — Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

“It is now nearly five years since I was an ape, a short space of time, perhaps, according to the calendar…” — Red Peter, from “A Report to an Academy” by Franz Kafka

Red Peter, it is so nice to meet you—I mean, you have to know how awful online dating can be. My father set us up—I think, based on your preferences in women, he thought we would have a lot in common. I must admit, I was excited to come to this restaurant. It is an excellent choice; the banana pudding is fabulous—the best in the city. I too love frequenting Paris, although I missed your performances with Hagenbeck. He also brought the world Otta Benga, did he not? I believe Mr. Benga resided in the same state where my father wrote his Notes. You are such a kind gentleman, compared to others. Here, let me adjust your bowtie; you’ve learned to be more human than most. Now, tell me, in your report to an academy, did you address your desires? Your dating preferences? Is the preference of the oranootan, in fact, for the black woman over his own species? Red Peter, my father would be very happy to hear about this date, if your preference is as such—I mean, for a woman like myself.

Ask a Local: Ejiofor Ugwu, Nigeria

January 25, 2018 Interviews

With EJIOFOR UGWU

Your name: Ejiọfọr Ugwu

City or Town: Nsukka, Nigeria

How long have you lived here: Eight years

Three words to describe the climate: early fall, harsh.

Best time to visit? Spring

The most striking physical features of the city/ town are:

A first time visitor to Nsukka will notice an environment full of hills, with houses at the valleys and at the breasts of the hills. Then he moves closer to notice a usually crowded park where the people’s central market, Ogige, is located. Not long ago, the roads were really in bad shape but things have changed now. The new state governor gave the town a serious facelift in terms of road reconstruction and it has increased access to and from the town.

Charlottesville: A Nightmare Tableau

January 24, 2018 Dispatches

By ANDREW JOHNSON

You arrive at the scene to play your part. Actors fill the stage, bodies motionless.

Stage right: Metal barricades and a long row of riot shields outlined by helmets, batons, cans of pepper spray, guns. Bodies of men behind it all. One body stands atop a tank, bullhorn raised to his face.

Stage left: Costumes include robes, vestments, yarmulkes, collars, habits. Props include holy books, prayer beads. Arms are interlocked.

Acid Raindrops

January 10, 2018 Dispatches

By JARED ALAN SMITH

Soaked students trudge with their arms wrapped around one another, some toward their apartments to scrub the liquefied tear gas from their clothes, some to the nearby bars to wash away the stains they’ve gained on their souls. I am holding my weapon tight in both of my hands.

The wet warning shots have had the desired effect, dispersing a crowd that gathered in front of the Teatro Universidad de Chile to protest for the third time in as many days. A graying caribinero whistles low, and one of the stray puppers that roam the sidewalks of the Alameda runs up to nibble at some chorizo the green-clad cop produces from the pocket of his vest. I check my firing mechanism and center the old man in my crosshair. I can’t get a good shot; civilians in the way.

The Fault Lines of Home: an Interview with Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters

January 9, 2018 Interviews

ERIN EHSANI interviews MARGOT KAHN and KELLY MCMASTERS

Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters have each been described as landscape writers. Kahn mapped the American West in the biography Horses that Buck and McMasters’ memoir, Welcome to Shirley, grappled with a hometown that was as dangerous as it was idyllic. In subsequent work, both writers found themselves writing and thinking about the places harder to locate on a map and much harder still to define: home. Kahn and McMasters are the editors of the recently published This Is the Place: women writing about home, featuring essays by thirty women writers who explore the complex and messy business of making, being, and leaving—or sometimes escaping—home.