All posts tagged: litfest

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
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LitFest 2025 Excerpts: Video Poems by Paisley Rekdal

Amherst College’s tenth annual literary festival runs from Thursday, February 27 to Sunday, March 2. Among the guests is PAISLEY REKDAL, whose book West: A Translation was longlisted for the National Book Award. The Common is pleased to reprint a short selection of video poems from West here.

Join Paisley Rekdal and Brandom Som in conversation with host Ruth Dickey, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, on Sunday, March 2 at 2pm. 

Register and see the full list of LitFest events here.


Not

 

What Day

 

Heroic

 

Paisley Rekdal is the author of four books of nonfiction and seven books of poetry, most recently West: A Translation, which won the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was longlisted for the National Book Award. The former Utah poet laureate, she teaches at the University of Utah, where she directs the American West Center.

LitFest 2025 Excerpts: Video Poems by Paisley Rekdal
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Am I a Fraud? Are We All? An Interview with Aparna Nancherla

Jennifer Acker and Aparna Nancherla talking at Amherst College's LitFest.

Photo courtesy of Jesse Gwilliam | Amherst College

APARNA NANCHERLA is in a class of her own. A writer, comedian, actor, and podcast host, Nancherla returned to her alma mater, Amherst College, for a conversation with The Common’s editor-in-chief, JENNIFER ACKER, during LitFest 2024. The two discussed her diverse creative portfolio, standup as a mode of self-expression, and her newest memoir-in-essays, Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself, and Imposter Syndrome. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. For a recording of their full conversation and more about LitFest, visit the Amherst College website.

Am I a Fraud? Are We All? An Interview with Aparna Nancherla
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Fatigue Can Shatter A Person

By ED YONG 

This piece originally appeared in The Atlantic. Journalist Ed Yong will be a guest at Amherst College’s LitFest 2024. Register for this exciting celebration of Amherst’s literary legacy and life.  

headshot of journalist ed yong

 

Alexis Misko’s health has improved enough that, once a month, she can leave her house for a few hours. First, she needs to build up her energy by lying in a dark room for the better part of two days, doing little more than listening to audiobooks. Then she needs a driver, a quiet destination where she can lie down, and days of rest to recover afterward. The brief outdoor joy “never quite feels like enough,” she told me, but it’s so much more than what she managed in her first year of long COVID, when she couldn’t sit upright for more than an hour or stand for more than 10 minutes. Now, at least, she can watch TV on the same day she takes a shower.

Fatigue Can Shatter A Person
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Excerpt from Tell Me How It Ends

By VALERIA LUISELLI

This piece is excerpted from Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli, a guest at Amherst College’s 2023 LitFest. Register for this exciting celebration of Amherst’s literary life.

Valeria Luiselli's headshot: brown woman in a blue jacket against a metal grate.

“Why did you come to the United States?” That’s the first question on the intake questionnaire for unaccompanied child migrants. The questionnaire is used in the federal immigration court in New York City where  I started working as a volunteer interpreter in 2015. My task there is a simple one: I interview children, following  the intake questionnaire, and then translate their stories  from Spanish to English. 

But nothing is ever that simple. I hear words, spoken in the mouths of children, threaded in complex narratives. They are delivered with hesitance, sometimes  distrust, always with fear. I have to transform them into  written words, succinct sentences, and barren terms.  The children’s stories are always shuffled, stuttered,  always shattered beyond the repair of a narrative order.  The problem with trying to tell their story is that it has  no beginning, no middle, and no end. 

Excerpt from Tell Me How It Ends
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Excerpt from We All Want Impossible Things

By CATHERINE NEWMAN

This piece is excerpted from We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman, a guest at Amherst College’s 2023 LitFest. Register for this exciting celebration of Amherst’s literary life.

Headshot of Catherine Newman

“What do you think happens after you die?” she says. “Oh!” I say. “Gosh.”

I was raised in a fully atheist household, so not much is the short answer. “Just toss me in the dumpster when I go!” my dad likes to announce, and when I’m like, “Um, Dad, I think funerals are actually more about—” he interrupts me. “In the dumpster!” “Okay!” I say. “The dumpster it is!”

Excerpt from We All Want Impossible Things
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Excerpt from Wildseed Witch

By MARTI DUMAS 

This piece is excerpted from Wildseed Witch by Marti Dumas, a guest at Amherst College’s 2023 LitFest. Register for this exciting celebration of Amherst’s literary life.

headshot of Marti Dumas

 

The next day, a woman with a little pink umbrella showed up at my house at the crack of dawn. My mother always gets up that freakishly early, and I was up because something kept dinging even though my phone was on silent. It took me a few minutes to figure out that the sound was coming from my computer. I must have left YouTube open when I collapsed after my rant. The dinging was notifications for MakeupontheCheapCheap. I had 81 new followers and 147 new likes, and the count kept climbing. 

Excerpt from Wildseed Witch
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