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“Selections from Sudan, courtesy of the Hindiyeh Museum of Art...

Fri, 08 May 2020 12:09:20 -0400

Islam Kamil Ali, Untitled (2011), 47x 62 cm, Acrylic on Canvas

Rashid Diab, Untitled, 25x 30 cm, Acrylic on Paper

Taj Al Ser Ahmad, Untitled (1998), 50x 63cm, Oil on Board

Moh’d Omar Khalil, Untitled (1992), 56× 75 cm, Oil on Paper

Abdel Qader Bakhit, Untitled (2007), 120x 50 cm, Mixed Media Snake Skin on Board

Rashid Diab, Last Dynasties (2011), 45x 47 cm, 1/1 Monoprint

Talal Osman, Untitled (2012), 70x 70 cm, Watercolor on Paper

Rashid Diab, Untitled, 25x 30 cm, Acrylic on Paper

“Selections from Sudan, courtesy of the Hindiyeh Museum of Art in Jordan, exhibits a distinguished collection of contemporary Arabic art from the start of the 20th century to the present, with frequent new acquisitions from established and emerging artists.“

Check out these phenomenal art pieces, as well as a variety of new poems, short stories, and essays, in Issue 19 of The Common!

Purchase a digital or print copy of the issue here, and don’t forget to visit our website for regularly uploaded, exclusive online pieces.

If your fall staff meeting doesn’t have apples AND cider donuts,...

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 14:16:08 -0400

If your fall staff meeting doesn’t have apples AND cider donuts, you’re doing it wrong. (at Amherst College)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3U6LTBBJL8/?igshid=1d8rxx7v4ebja

We’re at the Brooklyn Book Festival 10-6! Come visit us! (at...

Sun, 22 Sep 2019 12:54:48 -0400

We’re at the Brooklyn Book Festival 10-6! Come visit us! (at Brooklyn Borough Hall)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2uI8TcBWIO/?igshid=36ijcz1rzhmx

From “CORRIDO” | The Common

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 10:02:20 -0400

From “CORRIDO” | The Common:

I watch the waves—

They come to rest on the very same shore that answers to two different
names—

The waves begin in a place without nations—
They rise and reach towards me—
Then a metal line breaks them in two.

Read this poetic dispatch from Alfredo Aguilar about Friendship Park, and the impact of borders on human relationships.

Autobiography | The Common

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 09:00:12 -0400

Autobiography | The Common:

“ For a moment I was a failed skip of stone
sunk into the river for a moment I was the river
purling in long last shadows of September
for a moment I was a skinny grizzly climbing
from a beer can”

Check out Matt W. Miller’s reading of his poem “Autobiography” on our website now:

Submit | The Common

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 16:46:50 -0400

Submit | The Common:

Do you have place-based poems, essays, or short stories that you’re hoping to publish? This is your chance! Take a look at our submission guidelines and send us your best work!

August Poetry Feature

Fri, 30 Aug 2019 09:00:30 -0400

August Poetry Feature:

NATHAN MCCLAIN | The Flowers

| At the Park, a Boy’s Birthday

SARA ELKAMEL | Instructions for getting around a desert

BRIAN SIMONEAU | Each morning I get up I die a little

NATHAN MCCLAIN

The flowers

in the greenhouse
now flowers

in the supermarket
rubber-bound

clipped
from wherever

they seemed almost
to nod

their agreement with what
the breeze once said

now flowers
in some glass vase

on the dining room table
where no one eats

What race they are
doesn’t matter nor if

their stems are thorny
you see

They’re just flowers
They die

You walk by
them all the time

hardly thinking
twice about their names

How To Cure Your Fear of Flying

Wed, 21 Aug 2019 08:30:18 -0400

How To Cure Your Fear of Flying:

If you have to die somewhere (and you do), why not up there—in forward motion, encased in this treasured, suspended place, between being and becoming, then and now, A and B, here and there, below and above, above and beyond, self and other, a space that exists nowhere else, the space of your greatest advances, where you’ve most loved the gift of the world and the life it gave you?

Sarah Van Bonn’s essay “How To Cure Your Fear of Flying” uses the fear of airplane catastrophes to wrestle with a deeper sense of dread that comes with the passage of time.

Trousseau | The Common

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 08:30:24 -0400

Trousseau | The Common:

In all the early photos of my life, you are wearing a long skirt. It is pleated, with an elastic waistband, patterned with purple and red Japanese flowers. I imagine you purchased it from one of the consignment stores in Lincoln Square, their window displays nothing more than dresses and shirts hung on latticed wood wound with fake ivy.

Listen to the recording of Rowan Beaird reading an excerpt from her Issue 17 fiction piece “Trousseau.”

The Amherst Bulletin

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 08:30:15 -0400

The Amherst Bulletin:

These wafts, imperceptible by the extant senses,
disappear when we look for them,
just as the Andromeda galaxy spinning towards us
fades into a cloud when we search for its guiltless face.
A “cosmic pile-up.” Four billion years to live.

Rising sophomore Sofia Belimova brings a poetic dispatch that dwells on life at Amherst College.

A not-to-be-missed Dispatch from growing up in Jamaica - “Island...

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 16:53:19 -0400

A not-to-be-missed Dispatch from growing up in Jamaica - “Island Lessons.” Link in bio.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1HkcWMBRNv/?igshid=1dwkdop3k6hfc

Review: Hurtling in the Same Direction – At Home in the New World

Thu, 08 Aug 2019 10:00:07 -0400

Review: Hurtling in the Same Direction – At Home in the New World:

Maria Terrone’s grandparents were among the estimated nine million people who emigrated from Italy between 1881 and 1927. While her parents were born in the United States, her connection to Italy is deep, informing her identity and experiences as much as being a lifelong New Yorker has.

In At Home in the New World, Terrone shares how she has been shaped by this double set of roots. A collection of 21 essays, the book is divided into five sections — “Hide and Seek,” “Obsessions,” “The Italian Thing,” “At Work: Factories and Fifth Avenue,” and “From New York to the World” — that follow a loose progression from childhood to first jobs to her working life as an editor. Terrone is also an accomplished poet, and her poet’s sensibility lights up the prose — her sentences are shapely, lyrical, and full of descriptions that bring her words to life.

Translation as Art: Against Flattening | The Common

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 09:44:41 -0400

Translation as Art: Against Flattening | The Common:

“The simultaneous, yet separate, publication of the English translations and their Arabic originals is significant on a number of levels. Firstly, it affirms that the English and Arabic texts are intimately connected and yet distinct; that translation is creative work in its own right. Just as dual-language publications juxtapose original-language texts with their translations, so The Common and Akhbar Al Adab appear side-by-side, each on their side of the ocean, with just a few thousand kilometres between them.”

Andromeda Came to the Silver River | The Common

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 10:00:28 -0400

Andromeda Came to the Silver River | The Common:

as a girl approaches a mirror,
not yet a queen, and maybe never,
seeing in the water
no man’s voice to answer,
to say you are better
than another […]

Review: Farewell, Aylis: A Non-Traditional Novel in Three Works

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 09:00:16 -0400

Review: Farewell, Aylis: A Non-Traditional Novel in Three Works:

Following the publication of “Stone Dreams” in a Russian magazine, and likely as a result of a direct command of Azerbaijani leadership, Aylisli tells us, his fellow villagers, each of whom he knew personally, staged and videotaped a bonfire of his books. Aylis was no longer his, he laments in the essay, and would never be his again. But the morning after watching the video of the book burning, he was rejoicing. “The Aylis taken away from me that day by the potent hand of the authorities hadn’t been my Aylis for a long time already. It was their Aylis: without God and without Memory, without History, and without a Biography.”

Read Olga Zilberbourg’s analysis of Akram Aylisli’s “Farewell, Aylis,” which reckons with decades of Soviet violence and oppression in Azerbaijan.

July 2019 Poetry Feature

Fri, 26 Jul 2019 10:00:19 -0400

July 2019 Poetry Feature:

I see a woman

who looks like you and it makes me
stop. You’re not even dead
yet but sometimes it feels that way.

I’m sad about it, I am. It’s not something I put on my wish list.

I want to disappear when I see a man
with the right kind of mustache.

I know you know what I mean, the things that pull us back

—back again to the rooms and the smell of them.

You’re so far away from me. I don’t just mean I haven’t seen you.
Why shouldn’t we have formed a family without you? Don’t
we all need one?

Ask a Local: Miriam Sagan, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 09:00:30 -0400

Ask a Local: Miriam Sagan, Santa Fe, New Mexico:

Santa Fe was first a Pueblo, then a Spanish capital, then Mexican, and eventually part of the United States. But it often feels unlike much of the United States. Local culture and food and music, as well as art and literature, is still very Hispanic. It still has some of the feeling of Mexico. You can feel history in the central Plaza, by the cathedral, but really anywhere. There is so much archeology, you might find a pottery sherd or a stone scrapper in your backyard from the days of Paleo hunters.

Miriam Sagan discusses food, culture, and topography of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in an Ask a Local interview.

Antipode | The Common

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 10:00:14 -0400

Antipode | The Common:

“Miss Val! Miss Val!” A swarm of five-year-olds buzzes around me in the kindergarten playroom. Marni is standing in the middle, feet planted, lower lip sucked in, staring down her blood-coated finger from under her scrunched-up eyebrows as though the finger should have known better. This is leftover hubbub from bigger and scarier trouble in the courtyard, which involved a stuffed monkey, the edge of the sandbox, and a superficial but profusely bleeding head wound, but the ambulance has already left, whisking away the lollipop-loaded victim, and the droplets of blood are being cleaned up outside the courtyard doors.

Marni is what they used to call a tomboy: always up a tree somewhere or in a torn T-shirt, stoic and stubborn and spectacularly copper-haired. She is determined not to cry. I am feeling the heat of a syncopated breath in my ear—it’s Caleb, our zippy class gossip, perpetually astonished by everything he sees. He’s already climbed on the chair next to me and is delivering the news in a loud and horrified whisper: “She tried to save the monkey!”

Listen to River Adams read from her Issue 17 short story “Antipode.”

“Unlike the film, the novel also explores the romance’s...

Fri, 19 Jul 2019 08:47:21 -0400

“Unlike the film, the novel also explores the romance’s continued impact on both Oliver and Elio years after they part. Aciman’s language is beautiful, and Elio’s narration is raw and sincere. It’s a story that haunts you.”

We’re so thrilled and honored to receive the 2019 Whiting...

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 12:53:16 -0400

We’re so thrilled and honored to receive the 2019 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize! 🍾
https://www.instagram.com/p/B0EMTE2B1c4/?igshid=52ftignep7qk