Excerpted from Good Guys, out October 13 from Melville House.
Holding On is Forever
September 10, 2026
Fiction
All posts tagged: Fiction
Excerpts from Khanandihi
August 6, 2026
Fiction, Translation
By SHATADAL MITRA
Translated by BISHNUPRIYA CHOWDHURI
Piece appears below in English. Click here to read the original in Bengali.
Translator’s Note
I believe what makes stories great is their ability to surprise and hearten their readers simultaneously. The tale of Khanandihi, which revolves around a quintessential Bengal village as it lives through generations of transformation— social, economic, and ethical—does so with an unparalleled efficacy that deserves a global readership. The narrative defies linearity, both in its language and in its structure. As a result, past and present run interwoven into each other, endowing even the smallest characters with a cosmic expanse and scope. The text resists rushed reading—its layers of long, winding sentences and subtle subtextual nuances unlock only when savored.
Sharing The Lane
July 21, 2026
Fiction
By ELANA LAVINE
He gets in the water piece by piece, ankle thigh nipples, grunt. Shoulders below the same surface, it’s obscene, like slipping into my bed.
Oh that’s cold
I’ve stopped for breath. Not for this.
You’re a strong swimmer, he says, I was watching. A round-calved lifeguard stalks, pink toenails at my eyeline. She knows, and I know, that I can’t have a lane all to myself.
Podcast: Juliet McShannon on “Rescue”
July 10, 2026
Audio, Issue 31, Podcast, Podcasts & Audio
Transcript: Juliet McShannon Podcast.
Juliet McShannon speaks to Emily Everett about her story “Rescue,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. The story follows a woman on her search for a lost dog through a neighborhood very different from her own, and explores ideas of loss, class, community, and healing. Juliet also discusses how her childhood in Apartheid South Africa, and young adulthood practicing law during the time of transition that followed, has shaped her writing.
Pink Days
June 23, 2026
Fiction
Excerpted from Long Island Girls
Susan wanders aimlessly down the alt rock aisle of Tower Records, one parking lot over from the Walt Whitman Mall, next to the TGI Fridays. She runs her fingers along the top edges of the CDs while a Fall Out Boy song plays through the store’s speakers, nails on a chalkboard with its high-pitched harmonies. She’s wearing her large headphones like a necklace, plugged into a Walkman in her black pleather messenger bag.
Martyrs
June 16, 2026
Fiction
When I got home from school that day, my mother was clearly excited about something. She must have been watching for me from the window, because she met me at the door, and behind her I could see something denim folded up on the table beside the teapot. “I have a special treat for you,” she said. My heart ballooned in my chest. Levi’s. All at once I wanted to hug her and rush past her to put them on, I wanted to dance around the apartment like I never did, and I wanted more things, too—for my father to emerge from where he had been hiding all my life, the closet, or the jungles of Africa or Mexico, stepping from the shadows, framed by the doorway.
She took my hand and walked with me over to the table. My heart began to deflate the closer we got, for it was clear that what was folded up there wasn’t a pair of Levi’s, but a length of raw fabric that had been created to rival Western denim. My mother was so happy that she seemed to slip outside her own body, snapping out the fabric like a flag, running her hand down it, wrapping it around my waist, nearly singing her words, because she thought she had given me what I wanted, that this would then be enough for me: this apartment, this city, this country, and my mother.
The Sound the Sun Makes
May 19, 2026
Fiction
The village sits in the throat of the Maloti mountains, which hum pink with the setting sun. From east to west, the mountains resemble many fists, the knuckles as peaks, the fingers as slopes, the space between a deep emerald.
Tsepiso—fifteen, lover of algebraic maths, The Bold and the Beautiful, and the Greek-American singer Yanni—must walk to the village pump and return home before dark. Thabang, her neighbor, who saves sweets for her from the Chinese shop, intends to marry Tsepiso. This news drifted through the village like a Sunlight soap bubble, and so Tsepiso’s mother has warned her to be home early. Otherwise, Thabang will take her into the maize fields, lay her down, and make her a wife.
Podcast: A. J. Bermudez on “The Sixteenth Brother”
May 8, 2026
Audio, Issue 30 Fiction, Podcast, Podcasts & Audio
A. J. BERMUDEZ speaks to EMILY EVERETT about her story “The Sixteenth Brother,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. With a fable-like feel, the story explores the dynamics of family and gender roles in Morocco, as fifteen brothers scheme to convince their youngest sibling to allow the sale of the family’s ancient and opulent riyad. A. J. discusses the story’s framing device—a storyteller relaying it, almost like gossip—and how it creates both intimacy and distance. She also talks about her work in film, and the interplay between writing for the page and for the screen.
A. J. Bermudez is an award-winning writer and director who divides her time between Los Angeles and New York. She is the author of Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award and a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She is a recipient of the PAGE Award, the Diverse Voices Award, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the Steinbeck Fellowship. In addition to writing and filmmaking, she is also a former boxer and EMT, and her work gravitates toward contemporary intersections of power, privilege, and place.
How to Cry in Public Places
May 7, 2026
Fiction, Translation
Translated from the Polish by KLAUDIA CIERLUK
Translator’s Note
I first encountered Emilia Dłużewska’s How to Cry in Public Places (Jak płakać w miejscach publicznych) three years ago, when it was shortlisted for the Joseph Conrad award—the most important Polish prize for a debut work. I was immediately captivated by its strong and unique voice: if you’re looking for a somber work about depression, this is not what you’ll find here. Instead, Dłużewska navigates her experiences with mental illness, the structural inequalities that fuel it, and the grey reality of post-Soviet Poland with unusual grace and humor, smoothly moving between disparate tones and registers. Playful vignettes, to-do lists, and shrewd word plays are just a few of the elements that comprise this genre-defying work. Set in contemporary Warsaw, with the lingering shadows of the Soviet era still shaping everyday life, How to Cry in Public Places nevertheless attests to the universality of the experience of depression, exploring how private suffering is deeply connected to the social and political contexts that surround it. The book’s intelligent deconstruction of mental illness affixes it to the vibrant vein of modern, English-language classics that approach similar issues through an equally dark and funny perspective, such as Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Juliet Escoria’s Juliet the Maniac—the key reason in my belief that Dłużewska’s prose will appeal to readers on the other side of the ocean as well.
Working In
April 24, 2026
Fiction, Issue 31, Issue 31 Fiction
The first time I saw Lake I was sitting on the bench between sets, waiting for the burn in my chest to subside. She walked past me to the big cage and slung her duffel to the floor. I watched with idle interest as she wrapped her wrists with soft black straps and wrangled her hair into a high loop. Her rose-colored Alphaletes came up well above her hips, and she wore a long-sleeved crop top that announced in block letters
NO TIME FOR RATS.
NO TIME FOR SNAKES.
