With ELIZABETH BRADFIELD
Your name: Elizabeth Bradfield
Current city or town: North Truro, MA
How long have you lived here: Well, that’s not an easy one. There were a few years in Provincetown and then the five or seven years—depending on how you count two of them—I was connected but away. Perhaps it’s simpler to say that I began belonging to this place 17 years ago.
The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore stretches along the southern tip of Lake Michigan in sixteen separate pieces—jagged, sharp-cornered patches of land that float in an industrial landscape of rail lines, factories, and tiny dilapidated homes. The official National Parks visitors’ map includes not just the usual hiking trails and bike paths, but also two steel mills, an electric company, and the machine-gutted inlets that make up the port of Indiana.
About a year ago, on a gray day in March, my girlfriend and I drove here from Chicago, where she lived then and where I was visiting for a long weekend. Winter was melting, but it was cold by the water, the air heavy with evaporated snowmelt, the lake’s presence radiating toward us even before we could see the flare of blue rising above the mounds of the red silt. It was a lonely place. Except for an older woman sitting by herself on a blanket, staring solemnly into the distance, the beach was empty.
With the arrival of spring we’re leaping bravely into unfamiliar worlds—safe in the hands of experts, of course. An eerie peripheral dreamscape; quotidian life viewed from upside down or inside out, never as expected; the dark bureaucracy of the criminal underground; messages ferried to and from ghosts—these are unmapped terrains, and what better companions than these authors, their first cartographers? Expand your world(s) this month with these suggestions from our contributors and staff.
Recommended:
Bone Map: Poems by Sara Eliza Johnson, Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins, Blood and Money by Thomas Thompson, Self-Portrait in Green by Marie NDiaye, Elegies for the Brokenhearted: A Novel by Christie Hodgen.
AMHERST, MA. MAR. 12, 2015—From March 24–26, The Common literary magazine and Amherst College’s Copeland Colloquium will host a series of Arabic cultural events featuring internationally recognized writers, editors, translators, and musicians. Literary conversations will delve into the largely untranslated world of new Arabic writing, fiction in particular, and a live musical performance will bring Arabic music to local audiences. All events aim to broaden and deepen cultural exchange.
CONTEMPORARY ARABIC FICTION: A CONVERSATION: MARCH 24, 4:30PM
What themes and styles are emerging in contemporary Arabic fiction? What are the opportunities and challenges of publishing these works? Panelists include The Common editor in chief Jennifer Acker, acclaimed authors Hisham Bustani (Jordan) and Hassan Blasim (Iraq), Interlink Books founder Michel S. Moushabeck, and executive editor at Penguin Random House John Siciliano. Pruyne Lecture Hall, Fayerweather Hall 115, Amherst College. Reception to follow.
ARABIC FICTION MASTER CLASS: MARCH 25, 4:30–6:30PM
The conversation continues with a translation master class led by Bustani and El-Rayyes. 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. Pruyne Lecture Hall, Fayerweather Hall 115, Amherst College.
Email info@thecommononline.org to register.
LAYAALI MUSIC PERFORMANCE: MARCH 26, 7:30PM
The Middle Eastern cultural series culminates in a performance by the Arabic music ensemble Layaali at the Powerhouse at Amherst College. This Massachusetts-based and world renowned group is committed to furthering the appreciation of traditional Arab music and culture through electrifying live performances. The Powerhouse, Amherst College.
Doors open at 7 pm.
You can listen to the following video clips from last year’s Iron Horse concert by Layaali:
“The music of Layaali moves the soul and stirs the spirit.”
–The Palestine Center, Washington, D.C.
All events are free and open to the public.
PARKING MAP
Co-sponsored by The Common and Copeland Colloquium. Supported by the Georges Lurcy Lecture Series Fund at Amherst College and the Corliss Lamont Lectureship for a Peaceful World.
In spring 2016, The Common will publish a special issue of contemporary Arabic fiction in translation, featuring more than 24 writers from 14 countries in the Middle East and Africa.
About The Common (www.thecommononline.org)
The Common is an award-winning, print and online literary magazine based at Amherst College. Inspired by the role of the town common—a public gathering place for the display of ideas—the magazine publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and images that invoke a modern sense of place. Since its debut in 2011, The Common has received multiple awards from the Best American series, a design award from the New York Book Show, and praise for its editorial vision from national media such as The New Yorker, The Millions, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
At The Common we’re welcoming spring with new poetry by our contributors.
Curated by AMY HALLIDAY
In his 1838 “Essay on American Scenery,” Thomas Cole—the celebrated “founding father” of the Hudson River School of American landscape painting—wrote that American landscapes are:
a subject that to every American ought to be of surpassing interest; for, whether he beholds the Hudson mingling waters with the Atlantic—explores the central wilds of this vast continent, or stands on the margin of the distant Oregon, he is still in the midst of American scenery—it is his own land; its beauty, its magnificence, its sublimity—all are his; and how undeserving of such a birthright, if he can turn towards it an unobserving eye, an unaffected heart!
We were tipsy and in a good mood, Paul and I, coming home from our favorite bar in the whirlings of this season’s first “historic snowstorm,” when I noticed the figure floundering in the snow.
S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews BRIAN SHOLIS
Brian Sholis is Associate Curator of Photography at the Cincinnati Art Museum. He writes about photography, landscapes, and American history, all of which topics are combined in his essay “Our Poor Perishable World,” appearing in Issue 08 of The Common. In this chat with Oregonian S. Tremaine Nelson, Sholis touches on the American West, beauty and destruction, and the similarities between fiction and photography.
Gandy Dancer reviews The Common, emphasizing a “tasteful unity that is certainly the result of the common thread.”
This month we’re playing in the borderlands, exploring the spaces between categories. Intercontinental love stories; strangers in strange lands; the struggle to remain constant in a world of transience. These books bend genre and their subjects navigate the passages between success and failure, present and past, public and private life—between where they are and where they have in mind.
Recommended:
Middle Men by Jim Gavin, The Shape of a Pocket by John Berger, Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Ben Greenman, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Belonging: A Culture of Place by bell hooks.
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