My relationship with Joni Mitchell and her music moves through two stages. My early admiration for her—in the seventies—in some ways anticipated the zeitgeist. Then I stopped listening to her for about a quarter of a century. I began to rediscover Mitchell’s work in the new millennium, when, by coincidence, so was the rest of the world.
Calling
By MEGAN HARLAN
My first day in Bukit Tinggi, a town in the rain forest-swathed mountains of West Sumatra—a region home to the Minangkabau ethnic group, the world’s largest matrilineal society—I swore I heard a woman calling the Muslim midday prayer broadcasting from a white mosque.
Issue 09 Launch Party at High Horse Bar

Celebrate the launch of Issue 09 with a night of local literature trivia at the High Horse (upstairs) in Amherst, MA! Bring your friends and win summer-inspired prizes!
Featuring readings by Issue 09 contributor Edie Meidav and Issue 08 contributor Jonathan Gerhardson at 7pm.
The Common Statement
El Morro guards the northwestern tip of the old city, a headland with sparkling three-sixty views. Poised to fire cannons and guns against approaching sea invaders, the stone castle—six zigzagging levels, walls thick as hallways—was built by the Spanish starting in the early 1500s. El Morro protected Spain’s “porto rico,” the harbor crucial to any European empire seeking a foothold in the resource-rich Caribbean basin. But while El Morro protected San Juan from a seaside attack, the city’s eastern flank remained exposed to ambush by land, a weakness exploited by the British in 1598, then the Dutch in 1625. The Dutch succeeded in burning the city to the ground, but no one ever captured El Morro, whose now pleasant grassy lawn was, several times over, a bloody battlefield. After these near catastrophes, Spain began a second fort, Castillo San Cristóbal, at the city’s northeastern headland. Spain held Puerto Rico until the Spanish-American War, when the U.S. intervened in Cuba’s struggle for independence. During a few short, calamitous months in 1898, Spain lost to the U.S. its Pacific and Caribbean lands, including the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and, temporarily, a nominally independent Cuba. An empire of nearly four hundred years dissolved like cobwebs in rain.
Contributors in Conversation: Leigh Newman and Tyler Sage
In this episode of The Common’s Contributors in Conversation podcast, Issue 06 contributors Leigh Newman and Tyler Sage discuss “Big Not-So-Bad Wolves” and “They Called It Shooting Then.”
Real Life Analogs: An Interview with James Hannaham
MELODY NIXON interviews JAMES HANNAHAM
James Hannaham is a writer of fiction and nonfiction, an MFA teacher, and the author of the novel God Says No, which was a finalist for a Lambda Book Award and a semifinalist for a VCU First Novelist Award. Hannaham’s work interweaves social critique and strong characterization with robust plot, and he was recently praised by The New York Times for the way he makes “the commonplace spring to life with nothing more than astute observation and precise language.” Melody Nixon met with Hannaham in downtown Manhattan the day before his latest novel, Delicious Foods, was released from Little, Brown and Company. They discussed place, politics, and “racism as a curse.”
Friday Reads: April 2015
Amherst College (2015)
Amherst College covers The Common‘s recent NEA literature grant, highlighting The Common in the Classroom.
INDIA New England (2015)
India New England features The Common in the City 2015.
MassLive (2015)
MassLive announces that Amherst College will match the NEA’s $10,000 grant to The Common to increase the magazine’s reach to students in 2015.