(Amherst, MA—September 15, 2023)—The Common, Amherst College’s award-winning, international literary magazine, announces the addition of two new members to its Board of Directors: Meredith Dodd and Emilie Eliason ’99.
News and Events
Read Excerpts by the Finalists for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2023
On the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing:
Migration is an increasingly common feature of modern life. Whether for personal or for political or environmental reasons, when people cross the many thresholds of our world—traversing landscapes, languages, traditions, and border lines—they do so often at great personal risk. Those who make this transformative passage reckon with the isolation of displacement as well as with the meaning and value of “belonging” on unfamiliar soil. Their stories are the connective tissue of a global society, speaking directly to our present and our future.
Since its inauguration in 2015, the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing supports the voices of writers whose work brings fresh urgency to crossing cultural and linguistic divides, questions the sense of self in an increasingly interdependent world, and lends a voice to what it means to leave one home for another and why these stories need to be told. The winner will receive $10,000 and publication with Restless Books. This year’s judges, Grace Talusan, Jiaming Tang, and Ilan Stavans, have selected the following four finalists.
How to be UnMothered by Camille U. Adams
Can abandonment be good luck if a mother turns out to be even worse? Narrated in poetic prose and the rhythmic patois of Trinidad and Tobago, How to be UnMothered reflects upon the multifaceted cruelties of a mother who subjects her daughters to neglect. It journeys from the aquamarine seas and lush greenery of Trinidad and Grenada to England, Canada, and New York City. It explores Caribbean history from pre-colonialism to the present, and questions what the author sees as the chokehold of African spirituality. Finally, it affirms the role of choice in determining multi-generational legacy.
Unexploded Ordnance by Catharina Coenen
A collection of essays that interrogates what it means to come from a place where horror originates, and how terror can shape lives across generations, sometimes through our very DNA. Coenen, a doctor of biology, grew up in Germany and immigrated to the United States as an adult. Her mother, who had been five at the end of WWII, never talked about sheltering in basements while bombs shook the walls, fleeing burnt-out cities stuffed in the baggage net of overcrowded trains, or hiding her own mother under her sister’s crib during the mass rapes committed by invading French soldiers. When Coenen falls in love with a woman, she begins to disentangle her twenty-year marriage to a man, and the wartime anecdotes her grandmother shared throughout her childhood reappear like small grenades. With time, she comes to understand how historical threats to anyone labeled as “different”—Jewish people, disabled people, gay people, political dissidents—still bend her life, just as those threats persist across borders today.
Radio Big Mouth by Ana Hebra Flaster

Ana Hebra Flaster was five years old when her family fled post-revolutionary Cuba. They landed in a New Hampshire mill town, but she grew up Cuban-style, in a bright yellow duplex full of viejos—cousins, dogs, canaries. The women in her family worked hard to keep their Cuban identity alive, and they created a new family story: they’d won. They’d beaten Castro and Communism. Flaster believed those stories. But when her own daughter turned five, a deep depression appeared. What deep trauma had lodged itself in her when her family was uprooted from Cuba? For many refugees, she writes, refugee-dom never ends, even when you’ve scrubbed your accent and learned to like food that tastes like it was washed first. This book is a love letter to that story.
A Broken Russia Inside Me by A. Molotkov
Do we shape circumstances or are we shaped by them? A Broken Russia Inside Me is the story of a writer born into a totalitarian world and a tale of forging an identity outside what was given. At the age of twenty-two, Molotkov makes the decision to emigrate and, with $343 in cash, build a new life in the United States while the Soviet Union collapses and Russia is claimed by increasingly ominous leaders. He investigates what it means to be from a place he’s ashamed of and seeks to eradicate from within himself while also exploring how his choices and relationships still influence his attitudes and social responsibilities.
The Common Magazine Announces Fourth Literary Editorial Fellow
(Amherst, Mass. August 4, 2023)— The Common, the award-winning, international literary journal based at Amherst College, has announced its fourth Literary Editorial Fellow: Olive Amdur ’23. The fellowship launched in 2020 with support from the Whiting Foundation and is sustained by the generosity of Amherst College alumni donors.
The Literary Editorial Fellowship (LEF) was introduced with three goals in mind: to strengthen the bridge between The Common’s existing Literary Publishing Internship (LPI) for undergraduates and the professional publishing world; to provide real-world experience for an Amherst graduate, transferable to a wide range of fields; and to increase the capacity of The Common’s publishing and programming operations.
The full-time, postgraduate fellow writes, edits, and proofreads prose and poetry; creates multimedia web features; writes and designs publicity materials; manages print and digital production; and develops, organizes and staffs innovative events on campus and across the country. The fellow also helps to mentor and train current interns.
The Common Magazine Announces 2023-24 Thomas E. Wood ’61 Fellow
(Amherst, Mass. August 4, 2023)— Award-winning, international literary journal The Common has announced Sarah Wu ’25 as its 2023-24 Thomas E. Wood ’61 Fellow. The fellowship was created in 2018 with a $50,000 gift from Sally Wood, whose daughter and late husband, Thomas E. Wood, an avid reader and gifted poet, attended Amherst College. The fund annually supports one student intern who possesses exceptional editorial promise and leadership skills.
The Common Awarded 2023 Amazon Literary Partnership Grant
We are pleased to announce that The Common is among the 93 literary nonprofit organizations awarded a 2023 Literary Magazine Fund Grant by the Amazon Literary Partnership Literary Magazine Fund, in conjunction with the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses. Since 2017, funding from the Amazon Literary Partnership has helped further The Common’s mission of publishing and promoting emerging and diverse authors who deepen our individual and collective sense of place. In 2023, the Amazon Literary Partnership awarded nearly $1M in funds.
Join Weekly Writes Summer 2023: Accountable You
→ Signups for Weekly Writes Summer 2023 are now closed. To register your interest in hearing about our next WW program in January, please fill out this form.
Weekly Writes is a ten-week program designed to help you create original place-based writing, beginning July 24.
We’re offering both poetry AND prose, in two separate programs. What do you want to prioritize this summer? Pick the program, sharpen your pencils, and get ready for a weekly dose of writing inspiration (and accountability) in your inbox!
Issue 25 of The Common is Here!
Here are all the ways to experience Issue 25:
Click here to purchase your print or digital copy, starting at just $7.
Click here to browse the Table of Contents, including online exclusives.
Love Issue 25’s portfolio of stories and art from Kuwait? Donate to support The Common’s mission to feature new and underrepresented voices from around the world.
Interested in teaching Issue 25 in your class? Click here to explore your options and resources.
The Common Young Writers Program Opens Applications for Summer 2023
Applications are now open for The Common Young Writers Program, which offers two two-week, fully virtual summer classes for high school students (rising 9-12). Students will be introduced to the building blocks of fiction and learn to read with a writer’s gaze. Taught by the editors and editorial assistants of Amherst College’s literary magazine, the summer courses (Level I and Level II) run Monday-Friday and are open to all high school students (rising 9-12). The program runs July 17-28.
2023 Festival of Debut Authors
Join The Common‘s team on March 22nd at 7:00pm for our 2023 Festival of Debut Authors, an evening devoted to emerging talents! This virtual celebration will highlight poets and prose writers Carey Baraka, Farah Ali, Stella Wong, Jordan Honeyblue, Jennifer Shyue and Cheryl Collins Isaac.
The festival, hosted by previous awardees Carlie Hoffman and Cleo Qian, features readings and conversation by some of The Common‘s most dynamic emerging writers. Come to discover fresh voices and support the magazine’s Young Writers Program.
Register for the free event or make a donation to The Common Young Writers Fund here!
REGISTER HERE
Announcing LitFest 2023
We hope you’ll join us for the eighth annual LitFest, hosted in conjunction with Amherst College. This year’s lineup includes Pulitzer Prize-winner Hilton Als, MacArthur Fellowship-winner Valeria Luiselli, and 2022 National Book Award finalists Meghan O’Rourke and Ingrid Rojas Contreras, among others.
This year, we are continuing to highlight the work of The Common’s own Literary Publishing Interns and Amherst Alumni Authors during a reading at 4pm on Saturday, February 25. Join us for this exciting weekend!