Emily Everett

What We Were Like Then

By EMILY EVERETT

poetry room bookstore

We agonize over breakfast choices in the towering Ferry Building food market, then walk the piers eating flaky empanadas. But it’s cold and too windy, February, so we turn inland toward North Beach. Our cousin, a local, will meet us there for lunch. He’s suggested a tour of the neighborhood’s old Beat Generation haunts.

My twin sister and I are visiting San Francisco, ostensibly to see a concert but also just to see each other, since a year ago she moved away to the suburbs of Philadelphia. For the few short days we’re here, the West Coast experiences torrential rain. LA is flooding and the Bay Area is even drizzlier than usual. Becky and I are strategic—Saturday is going to be the driest day, and we want to see everything.

What We Were Like Then
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August 2017 Friday Reads

Curated by SARAH WHELAN 

This month, in response to a world that appears to be split across slippery fault lines, our interns are recommending books that explore cultural unity and interconnectedness. With attention to language, power, racism, and sex, these books ask the reader to reconsider her place in time as an intimate moment in a wider web of humanity.

Recommendations: Dance Dance Revolution by Cathy Park Hong, The Power by Naomi Alderman, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, and All the Dirty Parts by Daniel Handler.

August 2017 Friday Reads
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Friday Reads: May 2017

For May’s Friday Reads, we tapped a few Issue 13 contributors to find out what they’re reading. Their recommendations are diverse and complicated, dealing with hefty subjects—from mourning and the fear of death to geological history. If you haven’t read their works in Issue 13, it’s time to get started.

White Noise

Friday Reads: May 2017
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Photos: Launch Party & Spring Benefit

Bethany BallThanks to everyone who came out to support us at our recent Spring Benefit & Issue Launch! We love coming to NYC to celebrate, and the evening was the perfect opportunity to meet, talk, laugh, and share the work of our authors and artists. Photos from the event are up on our Facebook page. Please check them out and feel free to tag yourself and your friends!

Thanks again for your support of The Common, and for celebrating with us.

Photos: Launch Party & Spring Benefit
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Spring Benefit & Issue Launch

Spring Benefit & Issue Launch 

Tuesday, May 2nd

Nuyorican Poets Cafe
236 E. 3rd St., New York City
6:30–8:30pm 

issue 13

Celebrate spring, fresh new literature, and The Common at our Issue 13 launch party and benefit! Join us for a night at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, featuring Honor Moore, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Bethany Ball, and Mensah Demary.

Spring Benefit & Issue Launch
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Friday Reads: March 2017

Outsiders looking in can make for a compelling read, and that’s exactly what we’ve been reading this month. March’s recommendations examine characters isolated on the outskirts; a man estranged from his Tennessee community, a mother kept in solitude, and a whistleblower ostracized by his former colleagues. It’s not all happy ending, but it’s all worth a read.

Recommended: 

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy, August Snow by Stephen Mack Jones, and The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín.

Friday Reads: March 2017
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The Bill

By BIPIN AURORA

From Notes of a Mediocre Man: Stories of India and America

Ramesh Thakur had three houses—one in Defence Colony, one in R.K. Puram, and one in Malviya Nagar.  But he was not happy.

“So much dusting, Chandar.  I go to each house once a week.  I dust, I dust.  The sofas, the tables, the mantelpiece.  I do not forget anything.

“But it is hard work, Chandar.  It is not easy.”

But still I was happy for him.  He was retired, he needed something to do.  This kept him busy.  He had three houses:  there was security in that.  He had some place to go three days a week:  this kept him busy, there was security in that as well.

The Bill
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