News and Events

The Common Announces 2024 Amazon Literary Partnership Grant

June 27, 2024 News, News and Events

The Common is pleased to announce the receipt of its sixth award from the Amazon Literary Partnership’s Literary Magazine Fund.

“We are honored to receive the Amazon Literary Partnership’s continued support,” said Jennifer Acker, The Common editor in chief. “This grant enables us to show how much we value our authors—by paying them a competitive rate and engaging them through and beyond the publication process.”

The Common plans to use this $5,000 grant to continue highlighting the voices of vibrant literary communities underrepresented in the publishing world. Past funding from the Amazon Literary Partnership most recently supported a portfolio of farmworker writing (Issue 26), co-edited with Lambda Literary Fellow Miguel M. Morales. This new grant will provide direct payments to a diverse group of writers and help them find a global readership via The Common’s integrated print and online publishing platforms.

Weekly Writes 2024: Committin’ to Get It Written!

June 18, 2024 News, News and Events

Need some motivation? We’ve got you covered! Weekly Writes is a ten-week program designed to help you create your own place-based writing, beginning July 29.

We’re offering both poetry AND prose, in two separate programs. Whether you’re the next Dickinson or Dostoevsky, pick your program, sharpen your pencils, and get ready for a weekly dose of writing inspiration (and accountability) in your inbox!

Fee-Free Submission Period

June 1, 2024 News and Events

Inspired by the mission and role of the town common, an egalitarian gathering place, The Common aims to foster the global exchange of diverse ideas and experiences. As such, we welcome and encourage submissions from writers who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, disabled, LGBTQIA+-identifying, immigrant, international, low-income, and/or otherwise from communities underrepresented in U.S. literary magazines and journals.

In an effort to remove barriers to access, The Common will open for fee-free submissions for two weeks, from June 17–July 1. Outside of that time, submitters with any financial hardship can contact us at [email protected] for a fee waiver.

The Common’s Issue 27 Launch Party

March 26, 2024 News, News and Events

This event has passed, but you can watch a recording of it below, or here on YouTube!

The Common Spring Launch Party
Wednesday, April 24, 2024, 7pm
Friendly Reading Room, Frost Library
Amherst College, Amherst, MA

Free and open to the public, wine and snacks will be provided.

Join us for the launch of Issue 27 of The Common! We welcome essayist and AGNI editor Sven Birkerts, poet January Gill O’Neil, and fiction writer Jade Song. Issues will be available for purchase. We’ll have brief readings, a short Q&A, and lots of time to mingle!

Left to Right: Sven Birkerts, January Gill O’Neil, Jade Song

Sven Birkerts is the author of a number of books of essay and memoir. His The Miro Worm and the Mysteries of Writing will be published in October. Former Director of the Bennington Writing Seminars, he co-edits the journal AGNI. He lives in Amherst with his wife.

January Gill O’Neil is the author of Glitter Road (CavanKerry Press, 2024), Rewilding (CavanKerry Press, 2018), recognized by Mass Center for the Book as a notable poetry collection for 2018; Misery Islands (CavanKerry Press, 2014), winner of a 2015 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence; and Underlife (CavanKerry Press, 2009). The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, O’Neil was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant and was named the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence for 2019-2020 at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. She is an associate professor of English at Salem State University and is board chair of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (2022-2024). O’Neil lives in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Jade Song is a writer, art director, and artist in New York City. Her debut novel Chlorine was published by William Morrow/HarperCollins (US) and Footnote Press (UK) in 2023 and will be translated into Chinese and French. Chlorine was selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice, lauded as “visionary and disturbing,” and listed as a must read book by Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, and other outlets. Say hi @jadessong and jadessong.com.

Applications are Open for The Common Young Writers Program!

March 21, 2024 News, News and Events

Learn more about the program and how to apply here!

Join us for the 2024 Festival of Debut Authors!

February 23, 2024 News and Events

Join The Common‘s team on March 27th at 7pm EDT for our 2024 Festival of Debut Authors, an evening devoted to emerging talents! This free virtual celebration will highlight poets and prose writers Felice Belle, Jordan Escobar, Irina Hrinoschi, amika elfendi, Nina Perrotta, and Shanna Tan.

The Festival of Debut Authors is an annual Zoom celebration of emerging authors who’ve published in The Common. Previous awardees Jennifer Shyue and Farah Ali will host the evening of featured readings by some of The Common’s most dynamic emerging writers. Come to discover fresh voices and support the magazine’s mission to publish and pay emerging writers.

This year, we’ll be doing some fun prize draws too! At the event, we will draw 3 names from the audience for an open mic. If you opt in, and your name is drawn, you can join our authors and read from any work, published or unpublished, for up to 3 minutes. We will also draw 2 lucky winners to receive a hardback copy of Shanna Tan’s new translation, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing!

REGISTER HERE

The Most-Read Pieces of 2023

January 30, 2024 News and Events

As our new year of publishing and programming picks up speed, we at The Common wanted to reflect on the pieces that made last year such a great one! We published over 200 pieces online and in print in 2023. Below, you can browse a list of the six most-read pieces of 2023 to see which stories, essays, and poems left an impact on readers.

Two Poems from The Spring of Plagues by Ana Carolina Assis, translated by Heath Wing

“i wish I could / prevent your death / and bury your body alive / in the puny damp / earth
we tended / so that it kept on living / mandioca corn banana / would not sprout forth /
but instead / acerola cherry blackberry pitanga hog plum.”

Read more.

January 2023 Poetry Feature, with work by Tina Cane, Myronn Hardy, and Marc Vincenz

“Sheila had IHOP     delivered to her apartment     in El Alto, NY / on January 6th
so she could kick back     self-proclaimed terrorist / that she is     and eat pancakes
     while watching white supremacists / storm the Capital.”

Read more.

The Story of A Box by Jeffrey Harrison

“Duchamp gave my grandparents the Boîte-en-valise in the early 1960s. It was one of many handmade boxes Duchamp created containing miniature versions of his paintings and other works. This item… might have been the most intriguing to my siblings and me.”

Read more.

Dispatch from Moscow, Idaho by Afton Montgomery

“The neighbor children are in the Evangelical cult that Vice and The Guardian wrote about last year. They’re not allowed to speak to us, which is a thing no one has ever said aloud but is true, nonetheless. This town is full of true things that no one says aloud.”

Read more.

Five Poems by Serbian Poet Milena Marković, translated by Steven and Maja Teref

“the girl isn’t wearing warm socks / some men catcall her at the bus station / she pretends not to hear them / the barking dog chases the escaping sun / there used to be a landfill / behind the supermarket / black birds used to have lunch / and even dinner there.”

Read more.

Farmworker Poetry Feature, with work by Rodney Gomez

“If I sang I was sinful, I was animal. Stole sips from circumscribed fountains.
I said murciélago, my knuckles drew a ruler. I said San Judas, my arm was viced.
Survived by christening the bruise a train track.”

Read more.

Thanks for a great year! We are excited to continue sharing work by writers all over the world with you in 2024. Keep up with the art, prose, and poetry we publish each week by subscribing to our newsletter!

The Common to Receive $15,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

January 26, 2024 News and Events

Amherst, MA — The Common literary journal is pleased to announce its eighth award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The Arts Projects grant approved for 2024 is The Common’s largest NEA award to date and will support the journal in publishing and promoting place-based writing, fostering international connections, and expanding the audiences of emerging writers.

Call for Submissions: A Special Folio on China after 2008

January 10, 2024 News and Events

The Common, in collaboration with guest editor Cleo Qian, will publish a special online folio of work about youth and contemporary culture from writers with a strong tie to Mainland China. Submissions will open on February 1st.

For the rest of the world, China’s 2008 Summer Olympics—with its $40 billion budget, dramatic “Bird’s Nest” stadium, and the lavish spectacle of its opening ceremony—marked the ascension of a new economic superpower onto the modern stage. Since then, new generations of Chinese youth have come of age into a society constantly rippling with changes, inundated with globalization, technology, and consumerism. The West continues to view China with curiosity, suspicion, and a sense of enigma as the country rapidly industrialized and urbanized, and its economic and political influence continues to shift. Yet Chinese literature translated into English is still predominantly written by older authors from the period of WW2, Maoism, and the Cultural Revolution, while neglecting the up-and-coming generation of Chinese artists, now dealing with wholly different lifestyles and sets of concerns.

Issue 26 in the news

December 20, 2023 Farmworker, News and Events

Since its publication this November, The Common’s Issue 26 portfolio of writing and art from the seasonal, migrant, and immigrant farmworker community has received attention from a variety of news outlets and organizations across the United States. Visit the links below to hear conversations with farmworker portfolio co-editors and contributors, read more about the development of the portfolio, and keep up with ongoing programming involving our fall issue.