All posts tagged: Jinjin Xu

LitFest 2025: Recapping A Milestone Celebration

With guest talks from physician Dr. Anthony Fauci and actor Jeffrey Wright, student and alumni readings, and a birthday party for The Common, this year’s 10th-anniversary LitFest was a celebratory occasion. From February 28 to March 2, 2025, attendees flocked to sold-out events in Amherst College’s Johnson Chapel, went behind the scenes with award-winning writers like Percival Everett, read poetry in the shadow of Emily Dickinson’s house, and celebrated the life and legacy of Amherst’s literary community. 

Read on for a gallery of selected images and videos from LitFest 2025, and view all the event recordings here.


The Common’s 15th Birthday Party!

Acker and Elliott address a crowded foyer from the staircase.

Founder and Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Acker and Amherst College President Michael Elliott raise a toast to The Common.

One highlight of the busy weekend was a champagne toast honoring The Common’s 15th year in print. Complete with cakes decorated as some of our iconic issue covers, the gathering celebrated The Common’s growth over the past decade-and-a-half into the thriving hub for international and emerging literary voices that it is today. 

A spread showcasing the magazine greeted guests as they arrived.

Each of the magazine’s 28 (and counting!) issues features an object from one of its stories or essays on the cover.

The Common’s 15th anniversary tote bags, designed by one of our interns and featuring sketches of objects from our issue covers, were on full display.

Everett smiling holding a TC tote bag.

Later in the weekend, Everett led a masterclass for Amherst College students on the craft of fiction.

Jefferson smiling with a TC tote bag on his shoulder.

In a panel discussion about American Fiction, Jefferson gushed about the influence of Everett’s Erasure on the film.

 
Percival Everett, author of James and other acclaimed novels, was a fan of The Common’s new merch, as was Cord Jefferson, writer and director of American Fiction!

Wright smiling holding a TC tote bag, flanked by two TC interns.

Wright, who starred in American Fiction, fielded countless photo requests from fans over the course of the night.

 
In between rounds of drinks and hors d’oeuvres, TC interns also got a chance to chat with renowned creatives about their craft, like actor and Amherst College alumnus Jeffrey Wright.
 

The Common’s full-time staff and student interns are, from left to right: Literary Editorial Fellow Sam Spratford, Editorial Assistants Alma Clark, Kei Lim, and Aidan Cooper, and Managing Editor Emily Everett (back); Editor-in-Chief Jen Acker, and Editorial Assistants Sarah Wu, Sophie Durbin, and Siani Ammons (front).

 


Readings from The Common’s Interns and Amherst College Alumni

On Saturday, March 1, Editorial Assistants at The Common read excerpts from their prose and poetry alongside Amherst College alumni who had recently published their first book. The reading was followed by a brief conversation with the alumni, who offered advice for current students.

Sam Spratford ’24 (Literary Editorial Fellow) gave introductory remarks, followed by readings from Kei Lim ’25 (David Applefield ’78 Fellow), Sarah Wu ’25, Alma Clark ’25, and Aidan Cooper ’26.


 Conversations With Dr. Anthony Fauci and Teju Cole

Cole signing one of his novels for a fan.

Tremor uses non-linear narration as it follows the life of Tunde, a West African man teaching photography in New England.

 
LitFest 2025 featured three sold-out events in Amherst’s Johnson Chapel. One of them, a Q&A with photography critic, novelist, and multidisciplinary scholar and professor Teju Cole, was moderated by The Common’s very own Jennifer Acker. Teju shared his perspective on autofiction in the context of his most recent novel, Tremor, and his signature intermingling of photography and prose in his myriad essays and criticism. (Cole’s first experiment with pairing text and images was published in The Common in 2015.)
 
Acker addressing the crowd from a podium with large purple banners behind her reading "LitFest" and "Amherst College".

Acker likened Fauci’s efforts to unite the public via science to The Common‘s mission to build global literary community.

 

Perhaps the most anticipated event of LitFest 2025 was a talk by Dr. Anthony Fauci about his career in public service, as told in his new memoir, On Call. In her opening remarks, Jennifer Acker reflected on the significance of his visit to LitFest:

”One of my motives for developing LitFest at Amherst was a desire to bring people together, to build a bulwark against forces that push us apart. Since Covid, we have unfortunately become more broken as a society, but when I think back to those days of 2020, 2021, and 2022, while I remember the isolation, I also remember communal, uplifting moments that stand out like stars against an otherwise black night sky. And one of those moments was watching and listening to Dr. Tony Fauci […] When Dr. Fauci took the microphone, we uttered a collective sigh of relief. We thought ‘Here’s someone who’s going to tell it to us straight.’”

Fauci shaking Murphy's hand at the end of the Q&A.

Fauci spoke about how his upbringing in an Italian Catholic family in Brooklyn profoundly shaped his worldview.

 

Dr. Fauci both took to and left the stage with prolonged standing ovations from the audience. You can view his full conversation with TC Board Member Cullen Murphy ’74 here.


Thank you to Amherst College and all who made this milestone LitFest such a memorable one! The Common is delighted to have now officially kicked off our 15th anniversary year. Stay tuned for more celebrations in the coming months.

LitFest 2025: Recapping A Milestone Celebration
Read more...

Four Poems by JinJin Xu

By JINJIN XU

Blue cover of There is Still Singing in the Afterlife

These poems are excerpted from the published work of JinJin Xu ’17, a guest at Amherst College’s LitFest 2025Register for this exciting, 10th-anniversary celebration of Amherst’s literary legacy and life.


 Table of Contents

  • “There They Are”
  • “To Your Brother, Who Is Without Name”
  • “The Revolution is Not a Dinner Party”
  • “Against This Earth, We Knock”

 

Four Poems by JinJin Xu
Read more...

Against This Earth, We Knock

This piece is part of a special portfolio about youth and contemporary culture in China. Read more from the portfolio here.
 

By JINJIN XU

 

              I try to feel this is home 1

                                         I don’t think

                                I am a foreigner 2
                                             I was not supposed to be      living 3

Against This Earth, We Knock
Read more...

Pandemic Diaries

By JINJIN XU 

#1
New York City    March 17, 2020

For the past few days, I’ve vacillated between panic, helplessness, and feeling like a prophetic, burning witch. I spent the first two months of this year watching the pandemic take hold of China—from the arrest of Dr. Li WenLiang for spreading “false rumors,” to Wuhan and the whole country going into lockdown, to my friends mailing masks back home to their families in China—sitting in my NYC apartment as the virus swept across Korea, Iran, Italy, making its way across the globe towards me.

Pandemic Diaries
Read more...

October 2020 Poetry Feature: JinJin Xu

Poems by JINJIN XU

Image by Xu YuanYan

Image by Xu YuanYan

Table of Contents

  • Mo Gao Grottoes, 1994
  • HongKong, 2019
  • Shanghai, 2005
  • baidu.com, 2019
  •  [                        ], 2018
  • Shanghai, [          ]
  •  [                   ], [          ]

October 2020 Poetry Feature: JinJin Xu
Read more...

TC Alumni Spotlight: JinJin Xu

Curated by: SARAH WHELAN

This month, enjoy a new feature that celebrates the wonderful former interns and employees that have worked at The Common over the years. Though we miss seeing them everyday, we’re continually impressed by what they go on to accomplish. This month, we’re catching up with former Editorial Assistant JinJin Xu, an Amherst College alumna, Watson Fellow, and most recently, recipient of the Lillian Vernon Fellowship at NYU.

JinJin XU

TC Alumni Spotlight: JinJin Xu
Read more...

Old Home, Mother’s Home

By JINJIN XU

Every summer, we boarded the sleeper-train from Shanghai to Jiangxi and I squeezed through the crowds to claim the top bunk in a tight compartment shared with two strangers. The train always smelled of feet and instant noodles, and I loved the 16-hour journey because it was the only time I was allowed to have the MSG-flavored noodles. I rolled onto the scratchy bleached sheets that stuck to my sweaty body, and pressed my head against the cool metal bar to peek out the window, upside-down. Rocking to the train’s steady sway, I felt the soft, comforting crease of the cash my mother had sewn into my underwear against my thighs, in case of pickpockets. Meanwhile, she sat bent on the bottom bunk, purse clutched to chest, glancing up at my dangling head and legs, muttering, “Behave, you are a city girl.”

Old Home, Mother’s Home
Read more...