By BEN TAMBURRI
Photo courtesy of author
Baileys Harbor, WI
Baileys Harbor has always felt like a place that is eternally old, eternally in the past. It is a destination for quiet summers on the Wisconsin peninsula, where the insignia of range lights and lighthouses decorate the bathroom of every home, and Dala horses wreath the doors. It was the place of my youth, even if it was only for a week each year. As a kid, when my family visited, I felt at home among the retired condo-dwellers.
By PHOEBE HYDE
The family are in the kitchen waiting to eat as the enemy soldiers approach the house. It’s already dark, and the man and child are restless at the table, waiting for the woman to pronounce the eggs set. She’s an excellent and exacting cook who will not be rushed. As the soldiers step onto the porch outside, the grandmother distracts the child with a joke: what did the rooster say to the wolf? and in the pause before the punchline, the first knock on the door falls—boom—and explodes—boomboomboomboom!
We think 15 years of The Common is worth celebrating, and we want you to be there when we do! Join us for a conversation, Q&A, and book signing at the Brooklyn Book Festival this September.
Our special guests will include Emily Everett, TC managing editor and author of the Reese’s Book Club Pick All That Life Can Afford; Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, former TC social media editor and author of the novel Mutual Interest; Annell López, author of the story collection I’ll Give You a Reason; and Ananda Lima, author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil. Come hear these writers discuss how themes of home, immigration, and belonging reverberate in their recent work. After the conversation, we’ll have an audience Q&A and book signing.
Tickets are free, but be sure to RSVP here to reserve your spot. Please share this with anyone who might be interested. We’d love to have a full house.
Not local? Don’t worry! The entire event will be live-streamed on Youtube, so you’ll be able to hear these amazing authors speak from wherever you are in the world. We hope to see you there!
By TOM ROSS
Review by TERESE SVOBODA
My copy of Miss Abracadabra is appallingly dogeared in my attempt to mark its most exquisite parts. Although amazed to discover that this is Tom Ross’ debut novel, I am not surprised that the venerable Deep Vellum published it. Miss Abracadabra is only the second novel they’ve taken on in twelve years that’s not a translation. What magic did Miss Abracadabra conjure to convince them?
By EMILIA PARDO BAZÁN
Translated from the Spanish by ALANI HICKS-BARTLETT
The piece appears below in both English and the original Spanish.
Translator’s Note
Emilia Pardo Bazán’s short story “A secreto agravio…,” which I have translated here as “For A Secret Grievance…,” emerges, in part, from Pardo Bazán’s vibrant and perspicacious reimagining of another important work: “A secreto agravio, secreta venganza” [“For a Secret Grievance, a Secret Vengeance”], an Early Modern play written by the Spanish playwright and priest, Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681), and printed in 1637. Calderón’s tragedy, one of an unfortunate “trilogy” of wife-murder plays he authored featuring a fatal confluence of jealousy, suspicion, and problems of fidelity that led to the wife’s unjustifiable death, was hugely popular on the premodern stage while also being in dialogue with a wider genre of plays featuring uxoricide and conflicts of honor and faith (we might think of “Othello,” for example).
We at The Common are pleased to announce the receipt of our seventh award from the Amazon Literary Partnership’s Literary Magazine Fund.
This May, contributors featured in The Common’s latest issue, Issue 29, gathered in Amman to read their work. The event was organized by HISHAM BUSTANI, guest editor of the issue’s Amman portfolio, to celebrate the portfolio’s publication by creating a space where these writers could share their pieces aloud. Having translated many of the featured pieces, ADDIE LEAK read excerpts from her work. HALEEMAH DERBASHI, author of the enigmatic essay-portrait of Amman, “Serious Attempts at Locating the City,” was interviewed about the event by the University of Jordan Radio. HUSAM MANASRAH, whose photos artfully capture the practices of various tradespeople in Amman, spoke to Aljazeera after the reading.
This month we’re pleased to bring you poems by PEDRO POITEVIN translated from Spanish by PHILIP NIKOLAYEV and new work by 2025 Disquiet Prize finalists AIDEN HEUNG and ELLIE BLACK.
Table of Contents:
When MAURICIO RUIZ told MELISSA FEBOS he was interested in addiction, she said he could borrow her books. “I have done a lot of research,” she said. “You’re welcome to use the material.” They stood in the lobby of the Old Capitol Building in Iowa City after the 2024 Krause Essay Prize ceremony. Ruiz plucked a praline from a tray and told her he missed Belgian chocolate. Febos pushed up her glasses and said, “Do you know anything about the Beguines?”
By TED CONOVER
The Reading Life is a special 15th-anniversary essay series reflecting on close reading and re-reading, written by The Common’s Editorial Board.
In seventh grade English class, I read a poem in an anthology that felt custom-written for me. “It’s Raining in Love” captured almost perfectly an anxiety that I, at 13 years, felt practically every day: how to talk to a girl. The first lines are all about the speaker, worrying about the right things to say, but then it shifts to the girl’s perspective and finally this ending:
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