Audio

Podcast: Jennifer Acker on “On 15 Years of The Common”

December 19, 2025 Audio, Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

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Transcript: Jennifer Acker

JENNIFER ACKER, founder and editor in chief of The Common, speaks to EMILY EVERETT about her essay “On 15 Years of The Common,” which appears in The Common’s recent fall issue. The piece is a reflection on the hard work and stick-to-itiveness it takes to train a horse—and keep a literary magazine running. Jennifer talks about how The Common has grown and expanded since its early days—when it was only her and a few student interns and section editors—including some highlights like favorite portfolios and a new film adaptation of a story from Issue 16.

In Another Version

October 27, 2025 Audio, Issue 30, Issue 30 Poetry, Poetry

By ELIZABETH METZGER

The Common Magazine · “In Another Version” by Elizabeth Metzger

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.

Podcast: Sarah Smarsh on “Bone of the Bone”

October 24, 2025 Audio, Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

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Transcript: Sarah Smarsh

National Book Award finalist SARAH SMARSH speaks to managing editor EMILY EVERETT about her career writing memoir, essays, and journalism centered on the experience of the rural working class in the US. Her essay in The Common’s fall 2014 issue, “Death of the Farm Family,” became part of her 2018 book Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, which became an instant New York Times bestseller, was shortlisted for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize, and named on President Barack Obama’s best books of the year list.

Smarsh discusses her most recent book, a collection of essays from 2012 to 2024 titled Bone of the Bone: Essays on America from a Daughter of the Working Class, out this fall in paperback. The conversation ranges from what the media gets wrong about working class Americans to how our understanding of and interest in talking about class and access has changed since the early 2000s. Stick around to hear how Smarsh manages the dual identities of rural Kansas farm kid and nationally recognized writer-commentator on class and culture, and hear what she’s working on next.

Hitting a Wall and Making a Door: A Conversation between Phillis Levin and Diane Mehta

September 8, 2025 Audio, Interviews, Poetry Recordings

Phillis Levin (left) and Diane Mehta (right)

DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN’s conversation took place over the course of weeks—over daily phone calls and long emails, meals when they were in the same place, and a weekend in the Connecticut countryside. Though what appears below can only be fragments of their full exchange, the two poets—both previous contributors to The Common—share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, exploring the pleasures of language, geometric movement, formal constraint, and expressing multiple perspectives in poems.

This interview includes recordings of many of the poems mentioned, read by the author.

Podcast: Mariah Rigg on “Target Island”

July 25, 2025 Audio, Issue 29, Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

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Transcript: Maria Rigg Podcast.

MARIAH RIGG speaks to managing editor EMILY EVERETT about her story “Target Island,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. “Target Island” is a story from her short story collection Extinction Capital of the World, out August 5 from Ecco; both focus on the islands of Hawai’i. Mariah talks about the process of writing and revising this story and the collection as a whole, and why reflecting contemporary Hawai’i is important to her work. Mariah also discusses playing with time and narrative flow in her stories, and working on a new project—her first novel.

Podcast: Pria Anand on “The Elephant’s Child”

June 27, 2025 Audio, Issue 29, Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

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Transcript: Pria Anand Podcast.

PRIA ANAND speaks to managing editor EMILY EVERETT about her story “The Elephant’s Child,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. The piece is a vivid retelling of a Hindu myth, the origin story of the elephant-headed god Ganesh. Pria talks about the process of writing and revising many versions of this ancient myth, why she felt inspired by it, and how her literary writing intersects with her career as a neurologist. Pria also discusses her debut book, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains, out this month from Simon & Schuster. The book explores how story and storytelling can illuminate the rich, complex gray areas within the science of the brain, weaving case study, history, fable, and memoir.

Podcast: Lucas Schaefer on “Tuesday”

May 28, 2025 Audio, Podcast, Podcasts & Audio

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Transcript: Lucas Schaefer Podcast.

LUCAS SCHAEFER speaks to managing editor EMILY EVERETT about his story “Tuesday,” which appears in The Common’s brand new spring issue. “Tuesday” is an excerpt from his novel The Slip, out June 3 from Simon & Schuster; both center on a motley cast of characters at a boxing gym in Austin, Texas. Lucas talks about the process of writing and revising this story and the novel as a whole, which started over a decade ago as a series of linked short stories. Lucas also discusses how the novel’s central mystery came together, what it was like writing with humor and in so many voices, and how his own experience at an Austin boxing gym inspired the story and its characters.

Raffia Memory

May 5, 2025 Audio, Essays, Issue 29, Issue 29 Essays

By LILY LLOYD BURKHALTER

The Common Magazine · "Raffia Memory" by Lily Lloyd Burkhalter

The man’s face is gone. Gone the others circled around him in the hut, gone the clang of cowry shells (were they cowry shells?) gathered around their ankles, gone the hut. Gone the ochre-red soil on which the hut was built. All that’s left is the fabric the man, who was a chief, was wearing. The blue of it—a blue so rich it throbbed.

Indigo doesn’t just dye a surface. It gives depth.

The Elephant’s Child

May 5, 2025 Audio, Fiction, Issue 29, Issue 29 Fiction

By PRIA ANAND

The Common Magazine · “The Elephant’s Child” by Pria Anand

The elephant-headed boy was born with the head of a boy.

“I had been expecting you for years,” his mother told him. “By the time you were born, you could practically walk.”

December Tanka

May 5, 2025 Audio, Issue 29, Issue 29 Poetry, Poetry

By PHILLIS LEVIN

The Common Magazine · “December Tanka” by Phillis Levin

Light snow, bare branches.
It’s easier now to see
Deep into the woods,
Loss upon loss settling
Under a lattice of ice.

[Purchase Issue 29 here.]

Phillis Levin is the author of six poetry collections, including An Anthology of Rain and Mr. Memory & Other Poems, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet.