All posts tagged: Events

Join us for the 2024 Festival of Debut Authors!

The Common 2024 Festival of Debut Authors

Join The Common‘s team on March 27th at 7pm EDT for our 2024 Festival of Debut Authors, an evening devoted to emerging talents! This free virtual celebration will highlight poets and prose writers Felice Belle, Jordan Escobar, Irina Hrinoschi, amika elfendi, Nina Perrotta, and Shanna Tan. 

The Festival of Debut Authors is an annual Zoom celebration of emerging authors who’ve published in The Common. Previous awardees Jennifer Shyue and Farah Ali will host the evening of featured readings by some of The Common’s most dynamic emerging writers. Come to discover fresh voices and support the magazine’s mission to publish and pay emerging writers. 

This year, we’ll be doing some fun prize draws too! At the event, we will draw 3 names from the audience for an open mic. If you opt in, and your name is drawn, you can join our authors and read from any work, published or unpublished, for up to 3 minutes. We will also draw 2 lucky winners to receive a hardback copy of Shanna Tan’s new translation, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing!

Register for the free event to receive a Zoom link!

 

REGISTER HERE
 


Join us for the 2024 Festival of Debut Authors!
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The Common On Campus: November 9th and 10th

Issue 26 cover: light pink background with a turnip and greensThis fall, in its 26th issue, Amherst College’s award-winning literary magazine The Common will publish a special portfolio of writing and art from the farmworker and farm laborer community: the migrant, seasonal, and often immigrant laborers who make up much of the US agricultural workforce.

Co-edited by Miguel M. Morales, the portfolio includes work by twenty-seven contributors with roots in this community, most of whom started work in the fields as children. It reflects their diverse experiences—long hours and low pay, protests and picket lines, the fierce resilience of their families, the warmth of their communities, and the satisfaction of doing hard work will, among loved ones. 

The Common is a print and online literary journal with a mission to deepen our individual and collective sense of place: to reach from there to here. Since its debut in 2011, The Common has published nearly 1900 emerging and established authors from 53 countries, developed unique workshops and educational programs, and built a local and global community of writers and readers of all ages, all from our office in Frost Library. 

On November 9th and 10th, as a part of this mission, we will host two events on the Amherst College campus celebrating our Issue 26 farmworker portfolio and exploring the relationship between its questions of land, migration, and belonging and our home here in Western Massachusetts. Contributors Nora Rodriguez Camagna and Julián David Bañuelos, as well as portfolio co-editor Miguel M. Morales, will be guests at both events. 

The Common On Campus: November 9th and 10th
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Issue 26 Launch Party in Amherst [VIDEO]

This event has passed, but you can watch a recording below! (Closed captions are included; download a transcript here.)


 

Issue 26 cover: light pink background with a turnip and greens

The Common Fall Launch Party
Thursday, November 9, 2023, 6pm
Friendly Reading Room, Frost Library
Amherst College, Amherst, MA

Free and open to the public, wine and food from La Veracruzana provided.

 
Join us to celebrate the launch of Issue 26, with three contributors to our portfolio of writing from the farmworker community!

We welcome portfolio co-editor Miguel M. Morales, poet Julián David Bañuelos, and prose writer Nora Rodriguez Camagna for brief readings and conversation about place, immigration, writing, farmwork, and family. All three of our guests grew up doing seasonal farmwork with their families. The event will be hosted by the magazine’s managing editor Emily Everett.

Pioneer Valley Workers Center logo (tractor wheel with sheaf of wheat)
Issue 26 Launch Party in Amherst [VIDEO]
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Craft Classes: Translation, Nonfiction, Revision, and Poetic Form

Image of a graphic with all four headshots, saying: 2023 craft classes; join us for a series of illuminating craft classes on writing and translating formal poetry, editing your own work, and writing nonfiction on place and belonging. 

Give your writing a boost this winter. Join The Common for a series of craft classes with these literary luminaries.
 

    • Boris Dralyuk: “Extraordinary Measures: Translating Formal Poetry” [register]

    • Anna Badkhen: “Writing about Place: Geography, belonging, historical context, and the implications of our gaze” [register]

    • Megha Majumdar: “Demystifying Publishing and Being Your Own Best Editor” [register]

    • Zeina Hashem Beck: “The Ghazal and the Poetic Leap” [register]

 
Each class includes a craft talk and Q&A with the guest author, generative exercises and discussion, and a take-home list of readings and writing prompts. Recordings will be available after the fact for participants who cannot attend the live event.
 
Each class is $125, or $85 for current subscribers or current and past Weekly Writes participants. 

 

Craft Classes: Translation, Nonfiction, Revision, and Poetic Form
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Craft Masterclasses: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry & Translation

Blue image with title CRAFT MASTERCLASSES with THE COMMON with group headshots 

Give your writing a boost this spring. Join The Common for a series of craft classes with these literary luminaries.
 

    • Bruna Dantas Lobato: No Two Snowflakes Are Alike: How to Translate Style [register]

    • Karen Shepard on Fiction: The Children’s Hour [register]

    • Willie Perdomo on Poetry: The City and the Poet, the Street and the Poem [register]

    • Suketu Mehta on Nonfiction: Writing the City [register]

 
Each class includes a craft talk and Q&A with the guest author, generative exercises and discussion, and a take-home list of readings and writing prompts. Recordings will be available after the fact for participants who cannot attend the live event.
 
Each class is $125, or $85 for current subscribers or current and past Weekly Writes participants. 

 

Craft Masterclasses: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry & Translation
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The Common’s Issue 21 Launch Party

On May 6th at 7pm EDT, join The Common for the virtual launch of Issue 21! Contributors Aleksandar Hemon, Celeste Mohammed, Abdelaziz Errachidi, and translator Nariman Youssef will join us from all around the world for brief readings, followed by conversation about place, culture, and translation, hosted by the magazine’s editor in chief Jennifer Acker. This event is co-sponsored by the Arts at Amherst Initiative. 

REGISTER

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email via Amherst College, containing information about joining the event. If you’d like to receive a copy of Issue 21 before the launch party, pre-order the issue here.

Image of Issue 21 cover.

The Common’s Issue 21 Launch Party
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Readings from Amherst College LitFest 2021

Amherst’s annual literary festival celebrates the College’s extraordinary literary life by inviting distinguished authors and editors to share and discuss the pleasures and challenges of verbal expression—from fiction and nonfiction to poetry and spoken-word performance. This year’s LitFest was held virtually, with authors, poets, and literature lovers joining from all around the world.

The Common’s Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker hosted two readings at LitFest: one with The Common’s student interns, and one with Amherst College alumni authors. Both events were recorded and can be watched below. Watch video recordings of all the events, readings, and discussions at LitFest ’21 here.
 

LitFest ’21 Readings by The Common’s Literary Publishing Interns

Student interns at The Common read short excerpts from their writing. Readers are:
Isabel Meyers ’20 (former intern, current Literary Editorial Fellow)
Elly Hong ’21 (Thomas E. Wood ’61 Fellow)
Whitney Bruno ’21
Sofia Belimova ’22
Eliza Brewer ’22
Olive Amdur ’23
 

LitFest ’21 Amherst College Alumni Authors Reading

Amherst College alumni read short excerpts from their recent work, and answer questions. Readers are:
Calvin Baker ’94
Chris Bohjalian ’82
Dan Chiasson ’93
Edward A. Farmer ’05
Michael Gorra ’79
Kirun Kapur ’97
Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne ’01
Ismée Williams ’95

Readings from Amherst College LitFest 2021
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Author Postcard Auction 2020

Image of TC logo with headshots of authors participating in postcard auction

It’s that time of year again: bid for a personalized, handwritten postcard from your favorite author through The Common’s seventh annual author postcard auction! The personalization of the postcards makes them fantastic gifts, just in time for the holidays.

Join in on the fun this year for a chance to receive a postcard from New York Times-bestsellers, National Book Award-winners, and MacArthur Fellows. In the past few years, authors have famously gone all out with their postcards: expect to receive anything from long letters to drawings and doodles to haikus. 

New this year, in celebration of The Common’s 10th anniversary, some bidders will also receive rewards from Penguin Classics! The first and every fifth bidder, plus the highest bidder and top two underbidders (just missed out on winning!), will receive one of a handful of books from the gorgeous Deluxe or hardcover Vitae series including F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, George Elliot’s Middlemarch, and the autobiography of Frederick Douglass.

Online bidding will open to the public at 10 am EST on November 9, 2020. Participating authors include literary powerhouses such as André Aciman, Susan Choi, and Valeria Luiselli, as well as writer-performers Jenny Slate and David Sedaris. Newcomers to the auction include acclaimed writers Anne Carson and Phil Klay and world-renowned singer/songwriter Natalie Merchant.

If you’re interested in supporting The Common but don’t want to bid, click here to donate

Author Postcard Auction 2020
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The Common’s Issue 20 Launch

Issue 20 Launch Guest Readers

On October 28th at 4:30pm EDT, join The Common for the virtual launch of our 10th anniversary issue! Contributors from across the globe will be tuning in to read excerpts from Issue 20’s portfolio of writing from the Lusosphere: Portugal and its colonial and linguistic diaspora. Don’t miss out! Register for the free event at the link here.

The Common’s Issue 20 Launch
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Author Postcard Auction 2019

It's that time of year again: bid for a personalized, handwritten postcard from your favorite author through The Common's annual author postcard auction! The personalization of the postcards makes them fantastic gifts, and they should arrive in time for the holidays.

Chris Bachelder postcardJoin in on the fun this year for a chance to receive a postcard from Pulitzer Prize-winners, National Book Award-winners, and Guggenheim Fellows. In the past few years, authors have famously gone all out with their postcards: expect to receive anything from long letters to drawings and haikus.

Online bidding begins this year on November 11, 2019 at 10 a.m. EST! Participating authors include literary powerhouses like David Sedaris, George Saunders, Ann Patchett, André Aciman, and Viet Thanh Nguyen, among others. Newcomer authors this year include author-actors Jenny Slate and Alan Cumming. Don't miss out!

All proceeds from the auction will help The Common's effort to publish emerging writers, aid our Literary Publishing Internship Program, and allow us to establish even more connections with students across the globe via The Common in the Classroom. Check out the full list of authors at our auction site: https://charityauction.bid/postcards.

 

Author Postcard Auction 2019
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