Translated from the Spanish by ALLANA C. NOYES
The story appears below in both English and Spanish.
Join The Common’s special events team on April 13th at 7:00pm for our 2022 Festival of Debut Authors, an evening devoted to emerging talents! The celebration will highlight poets and prose writers Priyanki Sacheti, Jeremy Michael Clark, Hiten Samtani, Danielle Ola, Carlie Hoffman, and Amalia Gladhart.
Hosted by Ben Shattuck and Sara Elkamel, the festival will feature readings and conversation, and aims to raise scholarship funds for the magazine’s Young Writers Program.
We are thrilled to announce that “The Old Man of Kusumpur,” written by Amar Mitra and translated from the Bengali by Anish Gupta, has been selected for the O. Henry Prize for 2022. The story was originally published in The Common Online. An anthology of the winning stories, edited by Valeria Luiselli, will be released this September from Anchor.
This is the first year the O. Henry Prize series has considered fiction in translation. In the prize announcement, series editor Jenny Minton Quigley writes, “If stories give us a window through which to momentarily enter the soul of another person, then translated stories magically transcend the limits of the language that has shaped our consciousness.“
View the full list of winners and read more about the prize at LitHub.
Congratulations to Amar, Anish, and all the winners!
Curated by ELLY HONG
Here at The Common, our incisive volunteer readers are the first to review fiction and nonfiction submissions to the magazine. In this month’s round of Friday Reads, they recommend three exciting new works of speculative fiction.
New poems from our contributors JORDAN HONEYBLUE, ROBERT WOOD LYNN, BENJAMIN PALOFF, and LYNNE THOMPSON.
Table of Contents:
Jordan Honeyblue | free it.
Robert Wood Lynn | Peepers in February
Benjamin Paloff | Of Vanity
Lynne Thompson | Paradise: 579
Reviewed by REBECCA GAYLE HOWELL
On a Sabbath day in 1855, Emily Dickinson wrote a letter to her dear one, Mrs. Holland. Mrs. Holland was the poet’s chosen sister, a mentor and friend in gardening and recipes, householding and womanhood. They were correspondents for more than 30 years, sharing their litanies of living a life. This particular letter concerned the disorienting process of moving house. The Dickinson family was returning to their homeplace. It was the house where Emily was born and it would be the house where she died. But in that moment, having lived fifteen years elsewhere, she felt pillaged and lost, a kind of expat from her country of knowns.
The following is an excerpt from Here Lies by Oliva Clare Friedman, out now from Grove Press. Click here to purchase.
From before I began, I loved her. This was what I knew. Before the beginning, before I was born from her, before bones and blood and body, before egg.
My mother Naomi was dead and not buried. Dead in fact for half a year. Her body burned to ashes by the state, bones, heart, feet, eyes burned to dust, against her wish, against mine, and that was that. I was trying to understand.
PATRICK ROSAL interviewed by WILLIE PERDOMO
Patrick Rosal is an interdisciplinary artist and author of five full-length collections of poetry. Former Interviews Editor Willie Perdomo connected with Patrick over email this winter, and in this lively exchange, they discuss the spirit realm and its ability to breathe life into writing. Rosal shares his perspective on music and performance in his work, as well as the importance of honoring rituals, ancestors, and legacy.
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