By NALINI JONES
This piece is excerpted from the novel The Unbroken Coast by Nalini Jones, a guest at Amherst College’s eleventh annual literary festival. Register and see the full list of LitFest 2026 events here.
This piece is excerpted from the novel We Were Pretending by Hannah Gersen, a guest at Amherst College’s eleventh annual literary festival. Register and see the full list of LitFest 2026 events here.
By CLAIRE JIA
This piece is excerpted from the novel Wanting by Claire Jia, a guest at Amherst College’s eleventh annual literary festival. Register and see the full list of LitFest 2026 events here.
This piece is excerpted from the short story collection Where to Carry the Sound by Nina Sudhakar, a guest at Amherst College’s eleventh annual literary festival. Register and see the full list of LitFest 2026 events here.
By THEODORA BAUER
Translated by AARON CARPENTER
Piece appears below in English and the original German
Translator Note
Theodora Bauer’s novel Chikago (2017) follows two sisters from the Croatian minority in Burgenland, Austria. In this stand-alone chapter we learn that the family was ostracized from the small community in one of the poorest, but also most ethnically diverse regions in Austria. Burgenland was part of Hungary while under Hapsburg rule and is still home to Hungarian and Croatian minorities. This chapter begins with an idyllic trip that the father and his youngest daughter take to the village to do some business. When they hear a group of drunken townspeople plan on raiding the Roma camp just outside of town, where the father’s smithy is, they race back home to warn them.
Donbas Days
this is not the fault of the people but it is
the people’s problem
a lack of nerve
a chance to make a little meat
and unemployment like a flood
Teju Cole at LitFest 2025
For TEJU COLE, prose, poetry, and photography tug against and bleed into one another. At the tenth anniversary of Amherst College’s LitFest, on March 1, 2025, Cole spoke with The Common’s Editor in Chief JENNIFER ACKER about his novel Tremor, his approach to genre-bending, and the role of writers and photographers in bearing witness to catastrophe.
They walk to the ocean, talk about all the relationships
that have fallen apart around them.
So many women they know pursued love
and risked their chance for children.
The sound her hand makes against his sleeve
is the sound of palm trees.
By CORY BEIZER
Before my mother can return to her life and stop watching me eat, she says she must give me a dog. She swears a companion is the only way she’ll feel safe leaving me alone. It makes no sense. How can I take care of a dog if I am failing to take care of myself? She says that’s the point, to learn how to care, and if the dog dies, well, then she’ll know when to come back. I tell her no. My beloved cow figurine is companion enough. Its thick apotropaic horns will fend off the evil that is sure to return.
Carla wore a mask while trudging down the precipitous dune that shadowed Longnook Beach, her heaven on earth. She had brought from her city stash a colorful assortment of boldly patterned Mexican face coverings to make the necessity of protecting herself from airborne viral droplets less depressing. But bright flowers and butterflies, stout yellow ears of corn, and iconic unibrow Frida Kahlo faces made it no easier to breathe on the descent.
Most days, Carla used the shaft of her sheathed sun umbrella to steady herself while maneuvering over uneven ground. Today, Tom wasn’t there to help her carry her beach chair, so she had left the heavy umbrella at home. She wasn’t one of those old ladies who needed a cane, was she? A grinding creak from her arthritic left knee followed by an aching twinge and throb of pain from her right hip warned her that the uphill return would be a challenge.
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