Kevin Dean speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Patron Saints,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Kevin talks about the process of writing and revising this story, which follows a young American trying to find his place in Cairo, while the city roils with political uncertainty after the Arab Spring uprising. Kevin also discusses how it feels to write from memory, what he tries to capture when writing about place, and what projects he’s working on now.
Transcript: Maria de Caldas Antão
Maria de Caldas Antão speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her poem “My Freedom,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Maria talks about how a casual comment inspired this poem, which explores the idea of freedom, and what it might mean to be free: personally, politically, physically, philosophically. Maria also discusses how she hears a sort of music when writing new poetry, and then chooses words, sounds, rhythms, and line breaks to put that musicality on the page.
A.J. Rodriguez speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Papel Picado,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. A.J. talks about the process of writing and revising this story, which explores a fraught moment in the life of a Latino high schooler struggling under the pressures of family, friendship, and expectation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A.J. also discusses how his writing has changed over time, and why he’s always writing toward not just a specific character’s experience but also the complex community of a place.
Mayada Ibrahim speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her translation of “Symphony of the South,” a short story by Tahir Annour that appears in The Common’s most recent issue, in a portfolio of writing in Arabic from Chad, South Sudan, and Eritrea. Mayada talks about the process of translating this piece, including working with the author and TC Arabic Fiction Editor Hisham Bustani. She also discusses gravitating toward translation as a way to reintegrate Arabic into her life, after years of studying and learning in English. Her translation of Forgive Me, a novel set in Zanzibar and co-translated with her father, will be out in the UK this year.
At first I thought the pileated woodpecker
that lifted up from the yard as we came home
from a walk in the woods, flapping
away on long black wings that curved
up at the tips and flashed white
underneath, might be a visitation
Right before her twenty-fifth birthday, Chacha shaved her head, shearing the long black hair I’d known my entire life down to tiny-ass stumps. Having not spoken to my half sister in months, I learned about her haircut through Cero Reyes in the hallway of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where I was a sophomore. He was the little brother of her number-one homegirl, Cici, and had been there that past weekend at his parents’ hacienda up in the North Valley, banging on the bathroom door while our hermanas conspired Chacha’s new look.
I had to take a fucken piss, he said. Real bad too, but they spent over an hour in there, all giggling n’ shit.
You got a fuckload of bathrooms, I replied, gathering books from my locker to show the huevón I had other priorities. You coulda pissed in any of them.
“Cero” was a nickname that translated to nothing. It had carved this wiry, tacuache-looking vato since the day he could talk. Dude blabbered so much as a baby, stringing together words in an order that, according to his parents, made zero sense. He belonged to a family that made a name for itself in Juárez through some maquiladora empire. They’d moved to Albuquerque once his mami announced her desire to start a turquoise jewelry business. A couple years later, Cici popped into their world, who then met Chacha in a dance class for toddlers, and next thing you know they form this lifelong bond, a friendship so strong it forced me to spend too much of my childhood on a giant estate where I couldn’t help but wish my parents never divorced—wish we had enough skina to get out the varrio—wish my mother wasn’t such a pinche gringa and my pocho father spoke better Spanish.
That ain’t the point, Cero continued. It’s my bathroom, cuh. They used my shaving kit. Your sis’s hair was on the sink, shower, mirror—even the fucken toilet seat!
Amanda Mei Kim speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her essay “California Obscura,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue, in a portfolio of writing and art from and about the immigrant farmworker community. Amanda discusses how the essay changed and developed over many drafts. The finished piece explores her childhood growing up on her parents’ tenant farm in Saticoy, California, just north of Los Angeles. It also examines the long history of farmworker resistance and labor movements in the area, which crossed divides of race, ethnicity, and origin.
Nayereh Doosti speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “The Little One,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Nayereh talks about the many inspirations behind this story, which follows an older Iranian man coming to America, where he feels out of place with his family members, the community, and the younger generations. Nayereh also discusses her time as an intern at The Common, her MFA program at BU, and her brand new Persian translation of Aleksandar Hemon’s The Book of my Lives, out now in Tehran.
Nayereh Doosti is an Iranian writer and translator based in Berkeley, California. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Epiphany Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, and Nowruz Journal, among others. She holds an MFA from Boston University, and is a former intern at The Common.
Read Nayereh’s story “The Little One” in The Common at thecommonoline.org/the-little-one.
The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag.
Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction.
Leo Ríos speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Lencho,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue, in a portfolio from the immigrant farmworker community. Leo talks about the process of writing and revising this story, which explores the friendship between two high school seniors in a rural community in California’s Central Valley. Leo also discusses his family’s generations-long history in farm labor, and how a class on reading poetry made him rethink prose writing on the sentence level.
Vix Gutierrez speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her essay “Don’t Step Off the Path,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Vix talks about writing this essay, a coming of age story about her teenage years spent in the Balkans immediately after the Yugoslav Wars, where she lived with a very small humanitarian aid organization. The essay is a fascinating look at a rarely-explored moment in time, and probes the doubts, dangers, and power that come from being a young woman in a postwar landscape of men. Vix also discusses her formative time spent at the DISQUIET International Program in Lisbon, Portugal, and in the MFA program at the University of Florida.
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