Puerto Rican Writing: One Year after María @ Brooklyn Book Festival

September 10, 2018 News and Events

A BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKENDS EVENT

Friday, September 14, 2018 – 7 p.m. at Leonard Library, 81 Devoe St, Brooklyn, NY 11211
with Andrés Cerpa, Francisco Font-Acevedo, Carmen Graciela Díaz,
Joey de Jesus and Carina del Valle Schorske

September 2018 marks one year after Hurricane María devastated the island of Puerto Rico. This event features contemporary Puerto Rican writers of both poetry and prose sharing new creative work and discussing how the ongoing crisis has transformed our styles of survival, our experience of diaspora, and the function of translation. Readings will include a bilingual element to fully represent Puerto Rican linguistic diversity.

Four Poems from New York City

September 5, 2018 Dispatches

By SEAN SINGER

Photo by Robert Frank (1947)

New York City, NY

Floating

Today in the taxi I brought the famous jazz drummer’s wife, Elena, all around Harlem doing errands. Cobb is the last surviving member of the band that recorded Kind of Blue. We went to the bank and to the pharmacy. She let loose with some stories. It was as if his music was not alone waking up from its dream.

Issue 15 Launch Party

April 8, 2018 News, News and Events

Join us in celebrating Issue 15 of The Common! The evening will feature readings from Liz Arnold, Emma Copley Eisenberg, and translator Lissie Jaquette, followed by a discussion with the magazine’s editor-in-chief Jennifer Acker. This event is free and open to the public.

Shopping

March 10, 2018 Fiction

By JON LEWIS-KATZ

I am sitting outside the dressing rooms exactly where my mother left me ten or fifteen minutes ago, after kissing me goodbye and dissolving into the Macy’s crowd, when the white man who is my father appears. On the couch to my left is what my mother would likely refer to as a whole heap of clothes, little kid shirts and little kid pants that have been discarded by shoppers before me and left in a state of complete and utter confusion. On the couch to my right is a girl who, I have learned, has reached the fourth grade. We have known each other for barely ten minutes. Yet we have formed the kind of immediate friendship that is possible only between children who are yet to discover that even at its beginning every path is an ending one.

Daniel

November 8, 2017 Dispatches

By SUSAN VOLCHOK

New York City

Someone else, handing him leftover pizza, told me his name just the other day. As if it makes any difference whatsoever, my knowing his name, having watched him wander the neighborhood for at least two years now. Commercial rents are too ridiculous even for Café Corner: he’s been bedding down on the sidewalk fronting one side or the other of the former Figaro since the beginning of 2016. You’ve probably seen him yourself. He is harder to look at than some, a disfiguring cyst sprouting from his filthy forehead like a monster’s evil eye.

Explore New York City with The Common

July 18, 2017 Dispatches

Here at The Common, we’re all about place, so we’ve been experimenting with more ways for readers to experience the locations of our pieces. Using this map, you can explore all the dispatches we’ve published set in New York City. Get to know Eli the Seltzer Man, the nighthawks on the Upper West Side, and more!

Spring Benefit & Issue Launch

April 24, 2017 News and Events

Spring Benefit & Issue Launch

Tuesday, May 2nd

Nuyorican Poets Cafe
236 E. 3rd St., New York City
6:30–8:30pm

issue 13

Celebrate spring, fresh new literature, and The Common at our Issue 13 launch party and benefit! Join us for a night at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, featuring Honor Moore, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Bethany Ball, and Mensah Demary.

Leaving New York City: an Interview with Cathy Linh Che

January 1, 2017 Interviews

MELODY NIXON interviews CATHY LINH CHE

Cathy Linh Che is the author of Split, winner of the 2012 Kundiman Poetry Prize, the 2015 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the 2016 Best Poetry Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. Che is a Vietnamese American poet and teacher, originally from Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. She received her MFA in poetry from New York University and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from Poets & Writers, The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Kundiman, Poets House, and The Asian American Literary Review, among many others. Her poems have been published in Hyperallergic, Hyphen, poets.org, and AAWW’s The Margins. Her work delicately probes the liminal spaces between cultures, identities, nationalities, and bodies.

The Common Issue 12 Launch Party

October 25, 2016 News and Events

Event Date:

Monday, November 7, 2016 – 7:00pm

Location:

Housing Works Bookstore Café

Join The Common magazine for an evening of literary celebration as we toast the launch of Issue 12!

Burden

October 23, 2014 Issue 08, Issue 08 Poetry, Poetry

By JAMES BYRNE

for Yusef Komunyakaa

Downtown, already snagged between two countries, I make stock footage for an English return—block after block, hobbling in unwalkable shoes, uptown from the Ground Zero memorial where, today, Obama laid wreaths and tousled the head of Cannizzaro: a one-year-old boy on 9/11.

All posts tagged: New York City

Puerto Rican Writing: One Year after María @ Brooklyn Book Festival

Four Poems from New York City

Issue 15 Launch Party

Shopping

Daniel

Explore New York City with The Common

Spring Benefit & Issue Launch

Spring Benefit & Issue Launch

Leaving New York City: an Interview with Cathy Linh Che

The Common Issue 12 Launch Party

Burden

Bid on a personalized postcard from your favorite author in our Author Postcard Auction, now till Dec. 2!