News & Events | Page 197 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

Incident at Dante’s

July 5, 2017 Dispatches

There’s a cafe called Dante’s on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village that my father and I used to visit when I was a teenager.

It’s located in what is sometimes called the “south village,” which once was largely Italian. There were still traces of that neighborhood when I was a kid. Grandmothers on folding chairs outside tenements on Leroy Street, Our Lady of Pompei on Carmine Street, a Mafia social club on Sullivan Street, St. Anthony’s Church, the Vesuvio Bakery, tough kids hanging out in Thompson Park, Ottamanelli’s butcher shop.

Gestured to and not yet quite: an interview with Muriel Leung

July 2, 2017 Interviews

SARETTA MORGAN interviews MURIEL LEUNG

In this month’s interview, Saretta Morgan talks with poet, editor, and academic Muriel Leung about her poetry collection Bone Confetti; queer love; how loss can activate political consciousness; Hortense Spillers; and writing in a state of transition. Bone Confetti was released by Noemi Press in 2016.

June 2017 Poetry Feature

June 30, 2017 Poetry

Over the past year Vievee Francis has received well-deserved recognition for her latest collection, Forest Primeval, which won both the 2016 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Award. Her previous book, Horse in the Dark, won the Cave Canem Northwestern University Poetry Prize for a second collection, and her first, Blue-Tail Fly, preceded a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Since the publication of Forest Primeval, Francis has been working on a fourth collection, and at The Common we’ve had the honor and the pleasure of presenting some of her new poems: “On Leaving the Mountains and Coming to the City I Thought I Left For Good” and “The Beauty of Boys Is” appear in Issue 13, Spring 2017, and “This Morning I Miss Such Devotion” is forthcoming in Issue 14, Fall 2017. Here is “’Moan Soft Like You Wanted Somebody Terrible,’” our Poetry Feature for the month of June.

Rivendell

June 28, 2017 Dispatches

By JULIA PIKE

Garrett County, Maryland

“Kinder, es endet noch schlecht!” my grandmother cautions my cousins, who are wrestling near the fireplace. “Kids, this is going to end badly!” She laughs as she says it, though. Everyone is scattered around the living room, the nucleus of the big house. Cushioned benches run the length of two walls, and there’s a big fireplace elevated in a square stone fixture in the center of the room. A giant cylindrical black flue descends from the ceiling to catch the smoke and carry it outside.

Friday Reads: June 2017

June 23, 2017 Reviews

We love any excuse to hear from our contributors! This month, our Issue 13 authors and poets tap into their literary communities as they recommend works by colleagues, friends, and Pulitzer Prize winners. United in their affection, the authors are nonetheless divided by their selections, as their choices shed light upon nowhereness, colonization, and Florida oranges.

Recommendations: Notes on the Inner City by George Szirtes, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Quiet American by Graham Greene, and Chinatown Sonnets by Dorothy Chan.

Notes on the Inner City by George Szirtes, recommended by U. S. Dhuga (poetry contributor)

Missing Worlds

June 21, 2017 Dispatches

By BRYN CHANCELLOR

I bring my husband home to show him my secrets.

We both come from famous places. He’s from Nashville, I’m from Sedona. We one-up each other: He saw Porter Waggoner pushing a mower and Chet Atkins at the golf course. I served Bruce Springsteen a chocolate ice cream; Ted Danson’s folks banked with my mom.

Telephone

June 7, 2017 Dispatches

By ROB HARDY

I wrote my first college paper on a new Smith Corona electric typewriter and my last on an Osborne compact word processor. I started graduate school with a turntable and ended with a compact disc player. When the boys were born, I took their pictures on film that had to be sent away to be developed. The pictures came back to fill albums and shoeboxes. When the boys graduated from high school, I uploaded the photos to my computer and posted them on Facebook.

History is Not Over: An Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen

June 4, 2017 Interviews

ALEXANDER BISLEY interviews VIET THANH NGUYEN

Author Viet Thanh Nguyen is on a hot streak. Since winning a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for The Sympathizer, his nonfiction collection Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War and this year’s short-story collection The Refugees have amassed acclaim. In an ultimately uplifting conversation with Alexander Bisley, Nguyen discussed America’s obligation to help Syrian refugees, writers’ political responsibilities, and why the past’s traumas endure.

Drawing from Experience

June 2, 2017 Studio

By FRED LYNCH

Scene Stealing, ink on paper, 15 x 11.5”

“The painter wanders and loiters contentedly from place to place, always on the lookout for some brilliant butterfly of a picture which can be caught and set up and carried safely home.”
– Winston Churchill, 1948, Painting as a Pastime

The Common Receives Amazon Literary Partnership Grant for 2017

May 31, 2017 News and Events

We are pleased to announce that The Common has been chosen to receive a 2017 Amazon Literary Partnership grant. This support will specifically help The Common to continue its work publishing and celebrating new writers and diverse voices from around the world.

Incident at Dante’s

Gestured to and not yet quite: an interview with Muriel Leung

June 2017 Poetry Feature

Rivendell

Friday Reads: June 2017

Missing Worlds

Telephone

History is Not Over: An Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen

Drawing from Experience

The Common Receives Amazon Literary Partnership Grant for 2017

Discover the extraordinary in The Common.

Name:

Email: