News & Events | Page 270 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

Jennifer Haigh on Updike, Aging, and Desert Island Books

February 5, 2013 Interviews

S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews JENNIFER HAIGH

Jennifer Haigh is the author of Baker Towers, Faith, The Condition, and Mrs. Kimble, which won the Pen/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Her short stories have appeared in, among other publications, The Atlantic, Granta, and The Saturday Evening Post. S. Tremaine Nelson met Haigh at New York City’s Center for Fiction in December 2012, during The Common’s “Beyond Geography” panel; post-event, Haigh and Nelson discussed their feelings about the bone-withering winters of Massachusetts (Haigh lives in the Boston area; Nelson’s family on Cape Cod), and continued their exchange via email. Jennifer’s latest collection, News From Heaven: The Bakerton Stories, published this February by Harper, features a story originally published in Issue No. 04 of The Common.

S. Tremaine Nelson (SN): Have you always wanted to write?

Jennifer Haigh (JH): I’ve always written, but turning thirty gave me a sharper sense of purpose. I decided I couldn’t keep thinking of myself as a promising young writer, that it was becoming comical and would soon be pathetic. I concluded that I needed to fail at it quickly so I could get on with my life and devote my energies to something else.

SN: Was there a teacher who first encouraged you?

JH: Even as a child I was reluctant to show what I’d written, so my teachers never really got the chance. But my mother, a librarian, was always putting the right book in my hands at the right time. I think that’s the best sort of encouragement.

Interiors

February 4, 2013 Essays, In House

By HANNAH GERSEN

Last weekend I stopped by Film Biz Recycling, a thrift store that sells props previously used on the sets of TV shows, movies, and plays. It’s a place I’ve been curious about for years, having heard of vintage treasures to be found amidst its workaday prop items. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and upon entering was somewhat jarred by the hodge-podge of items, arranged with no particular logic. A toy piano stood next to a stodgy-looking coffee table, which sat beneath a shelf of Cuban cigar boxes and a framed copy of the rules of the board game “The Game of Life”. Across from this tableau, on the other side of the aisle, were an egg swivel chair (like the one in Sleepless in Seattle), a wooden 1950s baby blue high chair, and slew of fake flowers.

Buckminster: Profiles of Available Buildings, Governors Island

February 1, 2013 Essays

By SCOTT GEIGER

In the Upper Bay of New York’s harbor, there is a new urban island under construction. Technically, this project is a work of rejuvenation or, as professionals say, adaptive re-use. A military installation since colonial times, Governors Island hosted a U.S. Army base until the mid-1960s. Then the Coast Guard took over, operating there until 1997, when the federal government deeded the island to the City and State of New York. Good timing. The subsequent fifteen years saw New York City’s most radical re-invention since the invention of the elevator.

Reunion Island: Chantilly

January 31, 2013 Essays

By SARAH MENKEDICK

We lived in a half-built villa by the sea. It was terrifically gaudy, and the most breathtaking place any of us had ever lived. The two long walls of the rectangular main room rose only to knee height and from there became screen-less windows, which could be closed by winding down shutters. We left them open day and night. To the west we could see the vast cobalt blue of the Indian Ocean all the way to the heat-white horizon, and to the east, Reunion Island rising in boxy pastel-colored buildings and palms to its foggy volcanoes and peaks.

Free Copy of the 2012 Summer Fiction Issue

January 31, 2013 News and Events

Event Date:

Friday, February 1, 2013 (All day) – Thursday, February 28, 2013 (All day)

We’re always searching for stories by new writers that transport in a moment. Last August we published three such pieces in our first digital issue. We want to share this ebook with you, to load onto your new holiday e-readers. From today until the end of February, any new subscription includes a free copy of our 2012 Summer Fiction Issue. Already a subscriber? Give a year of The Common for Valentine’s Day, and receive three great stories for yourself. Join us in celebrating new talents and a new year of place-based writing.

Spices, Butter, and Earth

January 30, 2013 Dispatches

By LEE GULYAS

The chicken vendor’s stacked cages combine manure and death. Flatbread browning in the baker’s oven wafts smoke and flour. Metallic hints of thrown-out bean cans, misty exhaust of diesel trucks, heady tangs of eucalyptus trees. Even from inside our house the smell of fire is usual, from water pipes for smoking dried fruit and tobacco, whiffs of the neighbor’s incense, a sniff of matches and candles each time the electricity blacks out. Once we watched neighborhood kids chase after a rolling tire set afire, orbiting whirls of black and flame until the blaze consumed the tire, which wobbled in circles, then lay motionless on the ground. Children watched while acrid plumes of soot spread, lingering bitterness infusing the air.

Review: Daniel Fights a Hurricane

January 29, 2013 Reviews

Book by SHANE JONES
Reviewed by LINDSAY STERN

Daniel Fights a Hurricane, Shane Jones’ third novel, takes place in two worlds. One is an unnamed American town made concrete by its familiar landmarks—Target, McDonald’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods. The other is the phantasmal world of the protagonist, Daniel Suppleton—a thirty-two-year- old employee at a Stuart Services LLC, a pipeline construction site—who develops a crippling paranoia: that a Hurricane will descend and “erase everything.” The book chronicles Daniel’s retreat from the familiar world into his imagined one, and the struggle of his ex-wife Karen to coax him back to sanity.

Reading the Wrong Book on Vacation

January 28, 2013 Essays, In House

By JULIA LICHTBLAU

Christmas Day, 2012. I’m riding a packed flota back up to chilly Bogotá from the tropical lowlands. The fringe over the windows is jiggling to the beat of the motor, syncopated by potholes. I sit behind the driver, facing a life-size, crown-of-thorns decal of Jesus’ head, deep-sea blue. Vallenatos jangle over the bus loudspeaker. A stop is wherever someone wants off. The driver pulls over. People jump out.

blue man

What a setting. Anything could happen. An accident, le coup de foudre, a kidnapping. This is Colombia.

“Widening the World: Editors and Writers Discuss the Art of Bringing Far-Flung Places to Readers’ Fingertips”

January 27, 2013 News and Events

Event Date:

Saturday, March 9, 2013 – 10:30am – 11:45am

Location:

AWP Conference, Boston, MA

This panel features Jennifer Acker, Curtis Bauer, Susan Harris, Aviya Kushner, and Anne McPeak in conversation about strategies for bringing international perspectives to the readers. Located in Room 103, Plaza Level.

“Bored Board: Rethinking Your Most Important Volunteers”

January 27, 2013 News and Events

Event Date:

Saturday, March 9, 2013 – 9:00am – 10:15am

Location:

AWP Conference, Boston, MA

Join Jennifer Acker alongside Jeffrey Lependorf, David Lynn, and Anna Moschovakis for a discussion on building and utilizing boards. Located in Room 102, Plaza Level.