Emily Everett

The Misadventures of Wenamun

December 19, 2013 Studio

Adapted by ROLF POTTS
Illustrated by CEDAR VAN TASSEL

One enticing thing about travel tales from distant centuries is the way they suggest so many more stories that haven’t been told. While we assume that Marco Polo was a pioneer in his journey to the Far East, for example, we learn from his own narrative that he encountered other Europeans – Germans, Lombards, Frenchmen – in the cities of China. Polo’s contemporary, William of Rubruck, traveled across Asia and found Greek doctors, Ukrainian carpenters, and Parisian goldsmiths working in the Mongolian capital of Karakorum. As intriguing as these thirteenth-century accounts of Marco and William are, imagine a rich trove of unknown travelers’ diaries stretching far deeper into antiquity.

DC Arteries

February 15, 2013 Studio

Artists KATE MACDONNELL and LELY CONSTANTINOPLE

Curated by Elizabeth Hamby and Jessie Henson

443 Eye Street, NW, Washington, D.C., 2012. (Lely Constantinople)

“DC Arteries,” a collaboration between photographers Kate MacDonnell and Lely Constantinople, traces the subtle shifts of character and form that mark the landscape along the roads of Washington, DC. They capture the graffiti, the store signs, and the faded paint that make up the urban still-life passed along the way from one place to the next. These fragmented elements capture a fleeting sense of place in a dynamic city.

Voices from Japan

May 2, 2011 Interviews

HANNAH GERSEN interviews ROLAND KELTS

Aside from Haruki Murakami, much of Japanese writing remains unknown in the U.S., simply because it is not translated into English. Now, thanks to collaboration between the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space, and the Tokyo-based literary magazines, Monkey Business, a special English-language edition of Monkey Business is available in the US. This special edition, called “New Voices from Japan”, will showcase the best of the magazine’s first three years of publication and will include stories, poetry, and non-fiction, including an interview with Murakami.

As Stuart Dybek writes in a letter introducing the issue: “The books and anthologies that line my shelves attest to the fact that we live in a golden age of translation. Even so, it’s rare to have a literary magazine like Monkey Business appear in English. It arrives with the sense of discovery and immediacy that one reads literary magazines for.”

The Common’s Weekly Writes: Week One

July 1, 2000 Weekly Writes

Advice from the Editors

“Lit mag editors shouldn’t be the first people reading your piece. Early drafts, even if they have successful elements, rarely have the tight cohesion necessary to get an acceptance. Find readers you can trust to give you frank, helpful feedback, and work hard on revisions before you submit anywhere. Time is also a great editing tool; put aside your drafts for weeks or even months, so you can come back to them with clear eyes. It’s much easier to see the bones of a piece, and to spot weak scenes or characters, when you have some distance from the initial writing process.”

— Emily Everett, Managing Editor at The Common

Weekly Prompts

	Spend a few hours exploring a place that’s fairly close to you but that you’ve never visited before. This might be a park or a historical site or it might simply be a grocery store on the other side of town. Take careful notes about this place and the people you encounter there, paying special attention to anything that strikes you as out of the ordinary. Then, brainstorm different options for how you might write a short essay about this experience.
	Brainstorm a list of significant moments from your life that are connected to place. This might be a vivid memory from childhood, a significant moment from a trip, or simply a moment from your recent history that feels representative of the place where you currently live and what makes this place unique. Then, using the examples on The Common’s website, write a dispatch—a short written snapshot of moment in time that is inextricably tied up with the location in which it took place.
	Research an occupation that takes place in an unusual or interesting environment that many readers are unlikely to know much about. This could be anything from a nail salon to a movie set to a horse track. If possible, shadow someone who works in this environment and take notes about the sights, sounds, smells, and vocabulary of this world as well as the work being done. Then, write a character profile of a person who works in this place.