The Common is excited to announce four new additions to the editorial staff: Translations Editor Curtis Bauer, Contributing Editor W. Ralph Eubanks, Arabic Fiction Editor Hisham Bustani, and Dispatches Editor Nina Sudhakar.
Curtis Bauer is the author of two poetry collections, most recently The Real Cause for Your Absence (C&R Press, 2013). He is also a translator of poetry and prose from the Spanish; his publications include the full-length poetry collections Image of Absence, by Jeannette L. Clariond (forthcoming from The Word Works Press, 2018), Eros Is More, by Juan Antonio González Iglesias (Alice James Books, 2014) and From Behind What Landscape, by Luis Muñoz (Vaso Roto Editions, 2015). He is the publisher and editor of Q Avenue Press Chapbooks and the Translations Editor for Waxwing Journal. He is the Director of Creative Writing Program and teaches Comparative Literature at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.
W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi’s Dark Past (Basic Books), which Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley named as one of the best nonfiction books of 2003. He has contributed articles to the Washington Post Outlook and Style sections, the Chicago Tribune, Preservation, and National Public Radio. A graduate of the University of Mississippi (B.A.) and the University of Michigan (M.A., English Language and Literature), he is a recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and has been a fellow at the New America Foundation. Ralph lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and three children and is the former editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review at the University of Virginia. Currently he is a visiting professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi.
Hisham Bustani is an award-winning Jordanian author of five collections of short fiction and poetry. He is acclaimed for his bold style and unique narrative voice, and often experiments with the boundaries of short fiction and prose poetry. Much of his work revolves around issues related to social and political change, particularly the dystopian experience of post-colonial modernity in the Arab world. Hisham’s fiction and poetry have been translated into many languages, with English-language translations appearing in prestigious journals across the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, including The Kenyon Review, The Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, World Literature Today, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Residency for Artists and Writers for 2017.
Nina Sudhakar is a writer, poet and lawyer. She is the winner of the 2018 Bird’s Thumb Poetry Chapbook Contest for Matriarchetypes, and the author of a second poetry chapbook, Embodiments, forthcoming from Sutra Press in 2019. Her work has appeared in Ecotone, Arcturus and Breakwater Review and been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry. A graduate of Amherst College (B.A.) and Georgetown University (J.D./M.S.F.S.), she currently lives in Chicago.