News & Events | Page 324 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

In Search of a Ghostly Sea

October 20, 2011 Dispatches

Fifty years ago the white-crested waves of the Aral Sea broke over the top of the bluff I am standing on. Today there is not a single drop of water here. This place is called the graveyard of ships, where skeletal vessels marooned on sand dunes wait for a sea that will never return. The rusting hulks of twelve ships covered in chalk graffiti are the remains of what was once a thriving maritime and fishing industry in the now-defunct port of Moynaq, which lies in the northwestern corner of Uzbekistan. I climb down from the bluff to examine the ship corpses. The air is heavy and stultified; I feel so light-headed that I lean against the sun-baked metal for support. Looking up at the wall several meters above me, I imagine the weight of the water-that-was pressing down upon me.

Closing the Gap: “The Complete Plays of Sophocles: a New Translation” for a New Audience

October 17, 2011 Essays, Translation

By ROBERT BAGG

Harper Perennial published The Complete Plays of Sophocles: A New Translation by Robert Bagg and James Scully, on July 26, 2011. The book includes all seven extant plays by Sophocles, two of which will be included in the Norton Anthology of World Literature. The following essay was derived from Robert Bagg’s talk at the Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum in Northampton, MA.

Issue 02 Launch Party

October 14, 2011 News and Events

Event Date:

Friday, October 28, 2011 – 7:00pm – 10:00pm

Location:

Brookline Booksmith

Join us at Brookline Booksmith for readings by three contributors — Daniel Tobin, Katia Kapovich, and Philip Nikolayev — conversations about the works, and a party to celebrate the release of Issue 02.

“Talent Scouts or Red Pencils?”

October 14, 2011 News and Events

Event Date:

Thursday, October 20, 2011 – 7:00pm

Location:

Frost Library, Periodicals Section, Amherst College

A panel discussion in Amherst College’s Frost Library with editors for The New York Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, and Vanity Fair, moderated by Jen Acker. The event takes place as part of Amherst College’s series, “The Future of the Humanities in the Age of Technics.”

Dickens in Paris

October 12, 2011 Dispatches

By MANISHA SHARMA

We had no plans to visit Paris that winter. I was at the end of the second trimester of a difficult first pregnancy, when a few hours away from the comfort of home were all my hundred-pound body could afford. We were living in Salem, Virginia, five thousand miles from all our family in India.

October 8 – The Dow Closes Up 11006

October 5, 2011 Dispatches

By SUSAN BRIANTE

3 things were called into the somehow of morning
two dissimilar metals + moisture = electricity
and me here dimmed, all yesterday I wrote

Editor’s Corner: A Conversation with Hannah Tinti

October 3, 2011 Interviews

JEFFREY CONDRAN interviews HANNAH TINTI

Photo by Linda Carrion

Periodically, The Common will feature conversations with editors that illuminate the wide-ranging nature of their work and their creative lives. In today’s piece, Jeffrey Condran talks with One Story editor Hannah Tinti about the writer/editor relationship, The Good Thief, and the relevance of digital tools to the literary community.

The DMZ Sanctuary

September 28, 2011 Dispatches

By LYNNE WEISS

Some say it’s the most dangerous place in the world, but that might depend on your species. Surrounded by barbed wire, minefields, and soldiers, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea seems anything but, yet this strip of land a couple of miles wide and about a 160 miles long is a safe and peaceful haven for plants and animals. There has been almost no human activity within it for over 50 years.

Boston Book Festival

September 22, 2011 News and Events

Event Date:

Saturday, October 15, 2011 (All day)

Location:

2 Canal Park, Cambridge, MA

Look for The Common at the Boston Book Festival. We will be sharing a table with Harvard Review!

The Cabin

September 21, 2011 Dispatches

By JIM KROSSCHELL

In 1964, as a kind of recompense for, or salvation from, moving us to the treeless, waterless plains of Minnesota, my parents joined with Henry, my mother’s brother, in the purchase of a cabin in northern Michigan, and for seven summers thereafter we escaped. It was three months of heaven after nine months of hell. I remember it, vividly; the memories are icons, glassed-in and shimmering like relics of the Church.