I expect the countless eyes and cameras that have adored this place to have dulled it. But I see all colors in the desert; and they’re not tainted, as far as I can tell. I try to learn the terms and reasons for why it became the way it is. I don’t forget one name—desert varnish: the volcanic gleam over rusty red cliffs, as if spread by palette knife—and I repeat it in my head every time I pass it.
The Best American Poetry 2012, ed. Mark Doty, included Mary Jo Salter’s “The Gods” and Honor Moore’s “Song,” both from The Common Issue 01.
S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews DIANE COOK
Diane Cook’s debut short-story collection Man V. Nature was recently published by HarperCollins. The New York Times called it a book of “great beauty and strangeness.” Cook is a former producer on NPR’s “This American Life” and a graduate of the Graduate Writing Program at Columbia University. She currently lives in Oakland, California where she is at work on a novel. S. Tremaine Nelson talked with Cook about writing “unnerving” stories, her least favorite author, and the many perks of novel writing.
The Review Review gives Issue 04 five stars, saying it “seamlessly blends style, presentation, and experimentation with pieces that celebrate the universal human experiences of love, loneliness, heartbreak, and anxiety.”
Like Fire welcomes The Common as “a fresh contender in the lovely summertime stream of literary journals, one that’s absolutely worth taking a look at.”
The Faster Times reviews the first issue of The Common, celebrating the magazine as a “place for the placeless.”
The Millions‘ Tiffany Gilbert writes about The Common in the City party on Tumblr.
NewPages reviews Issue 00 in advance of our official debut, describing The Common‘s prose and poetry as “polished, refined, and serious.”
NewPages reviews Issue 08, finding it “entertaining, informative, thought-provoking, and above all else … comforting.”
NewPages reviews Issue 07, highlighting “lines that prick like needles wedged in the cotton of concrete, everyday objects.”
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