All posts tagged: 2014

April Events

April Events

April 10, 2018

We’ve got a very busy April ahead of us – can you join us at an event? We’ll be sharing our work, our expertise, and our brand new Issue 15 contributors with the world!

Juniper

Juniper Literary Festival

April 7, 1:45-2:45pm, UMASS Amherst – The Common will be hosting a panel discussion at UMass’s Juniper Literary Festival alongside editors from renowned western Massachusetts literary magazines jubilat, Meridians, and The Massachusetts Review to discuss what they’re looking for, how to submit to literary magazines, and the behind-the-scenes editorial process. Bring your questions! Then swing by the Book Fair to buy discounted copies of The Common. Click here for more info on the event!

EastHampton Bookfest
Easthampton Book Fest

April 14, 12-5pm, Eastworks Building, Easthampton – The Common will be participating in the Easthampton Book Fest; come find us in the Literary Marketplace! We’ll be selling discounted issues, answering questions, and maybe giving out a few freebies, too. Check out the bookfest website here!

TesseraeTesserae: Poetry in Community

April 22, 3:30-5pm, The Parlor Room, Northampton – Northampton’s Poet Laureate, Amy Dryansky, will host a special event on behalf of several local agencies that work to welcome and support immigrants and new Americans in the community. The event, Tesserae: Poetry in Community, will feature readings by award-winning poets Leslie Marie Aguilar, Maria Luisa Arroyo, Tamiko Beyer, Kirun Kapur, Oliver de la Paz and Ocean Vuong. As a sponsor of Tesserae, The Common will be posting an online feature of these poets on our website, so stay tuned! For more information on the venue, click here, and for full details about the event, click here.

Issue 15 NYC Launch Party

April 26, 6:30-8pm, Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, NYC – Join The Common to celebrate our Spring Issue 15 Launch, featuring readings by Liz Arnold, Emma Copley Eisenberg, and translator Lissie Jaquette, followed by a discussion with editor in chief Jennifer Acker. The event is free and open to the public, so make sure to stop by! Find all the event details here.

April Events
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Ask a Local: Dagoberto Gilb, Austin, TX

September 11, 2016

With DAGOBERTO GILB

Austin Texas Lake Front

 

In this month’s Ask A Local, Dagoberto Gilb offers us a glimpse of Austin, TX in the form of a micro-interview.

Your name: Dagoberto Gilb

Current city or town: Austin, Texas

How long have you lived here? 15 years 

Ask a Local: Dagoberto Gilb, Austin, TX
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Writing and Violence: An Interview with Judith Frank

October 7, 2015

MARNI BERGER interviews JUDITH FRANK

Judith Frank

Judith Frank is the author of the novel, Crybaby Butch, and a professor of English at Amherst College. She received a B.A. from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in English literature and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Cornell. She has been the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, and support from both Yaddo and MacDowell. Marni and Judith spoke online about Judy’s new novel, All I Love and Know, and what it means to write about violence in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Writing and Violence: An Interview with Judith Frank
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Layaali Arabic Music Performance

January 22, 2015
Event Date:
Thursday, March 26, 2015 – 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Location:
POWERHOUSE, Amherst College

Join us at the Amherst College Powerhouse for an electrifying musical performance by Layaali, a Massachusetts-based group committed to furthering the appreciation of traditional Arab music and culture.

Doors open at 7pm on Thursday, March 26. Concert begins at 7:30pm.

Free and open to the public!
 

Part of the Copeland Colloquium Program at Amherst College.
Photo by Layaali Facebook Page.

Layaali Arabic Music Performance
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Translation Master Class – Postponed

January 21, 2015
Event Date:
Wednesday, March 25, 2015 – 4:30pm – 6:00pm
Location:
PAINO LECTURE HALL, BENESKI MUSEUM, Amherst College

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED. Check back for rescheduling. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Hisham Bustani and Thoraya El-Rayyes will lead a translation master class. Drawing on texts in an array of source languages, the master class will focus on important literary considerations for translators, translation techniques, and the experimental and collaborative process of translation.

To register, email info@thecommononline.org.
Part of the Copeland Colloquium Program at Amherst College.

Translation Master Class – Postponed
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Where I Once Belonged: A Tribute to Kent Haruf

December 22, 2014 ,

By JAMES ALAN GILL

I studied history in college, because it seemed somehow practical (don’t ask me why), and after three years of study I realized that I was a mediocre historian at best, that what I loved about researching the past were the stories, and so I took a creative writing class.

By sheer luck that class was taught by Kent Haruf. I had no idea of the tradition of great writers who had taught at Southern Illinois University (before Kent, Richard Russo and John Gardner held his faculty position), nor the already strong and growing writing program that was present in 1995 when I was there. I walked into the first day of class like any other, hiding my nervousness with aloofness. I never had the text for any class on the first day.

Where I Once Belonged: A Tribute to Kent Haruf
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Friday Reads: December 2014

Friday Reads: December 2014

December 19, 2014

By SARAH SMARSH, IAN BASSINGTHWAIGHTE, STEVEN TAGLE, MACEO J. WHITAKER, JENNIFER ACKER, OLIVIA WOLFGANG-SMITH

 

This month’s recommendations from The Common’s contributors and staff deal with the intersection of old and new, ancient and modern, on every level—personal, religious, political, even supernatural. Perhaps in the spirit of the season, we seem preoccupied by stories of intergenerational strife, love, and ambition. In their urgent focus on belief and truth-seeking, these books represent a literature of searching, a catalogue of quests across time and around the world.

Recommended:

To the End of June by Cris Beam, The Harafish by Naguib Mahfouz, We Others by Steven Millhauser, Hum by Jamaal May, High as the Horses’ Bridles by Scott Cheshire.

Friday Reads: December 2014
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Review: Troy, Michigan & Don’t Go Back To Sleep

Review: Troy, Michigan & Don’t Go Back To Sleep

December 14, 2014

Books by WENDY S. WALTERS and TIMOTHY LIU
Reviewed by J. MAE BARIZO

Troy, MI

J. Mae Barizo reviews two poetry collections: Troy, Michigan by Wendy S. Walters and Don’t Go Back to Sleep by Timothy Liu.

TROY, MICHIGAN

Wendy S. Walter’s Troy, Michigan chronicles municipal and personal history in this elliptically elegant collection of sonnets. This book swivels gracefully through eras in the city of the title, alluding to its mythic namesake while divulging the narrator’s observations on industry, race, and the tug of the natural world. Walters spent 15 years of her childhood in Troy, which is in close proximity of Lake Huron and Lake Erie; her father worked for General Motors. 

Review: Troy, Michigan & Don’t Go Back To Sleep
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Book Shopping in Lisbon

Book Shopping in Lisbon

December 12, 2014

By JULIO ALVES

Bookstore

It’s Thanksgiving Day across the Atlantic in Massachusetts, where I live. There, among my American family and friends, it’s a quiet, contemplative day, but here in the Chiado, the heart of downtown Lisbon and the city’s oldest shopping district, everything is bustling, as if the Portuguese are scurrying to get a one-day head start on Black Friday. It’s a raw, drizzly day, a sign of winter’s approach, and the cobbled sidewalks are slippery. I’ve walked these hilly streets for 35-plus years, often darting from one bookstore to the next—new, used, rare—flipping through the pages of everything from current bestsellers, to obscure dime-store colonial-era comics, to rare folios of brightly-colored, highly inaccurate antique maps. That’s what I’m doing today, I’m book shopping.

Book Shopping in Lisbon
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