News and Events

Craft Classes: Translation, Nonfiction, Revision, and Poetic Form

December 14, 2022 News and Events

**Give your writing a boost this winter. Join The Common for a series of craft classes with these literary luminaries.**

- Boris Dralyuk: “Extraordinary Measures: Translating Formal Poetry” [register]
- Anna Badkhen: “Writing about Place: Geography, belonging, historical context, and the implications of our gaze” [register]
- Megha Majumdar: “Demystifying Publishing and Being Your Own Best Editor” [register]
- Zeina Hashem Beck: “The Ghazal and the Poetic Leap” [register]

Each class includes a craft talk and Q&A with the guest author, generative exercises and discussion, and a take-home list of readings and writing prompts. Recordings will be available after the fact for participants who cannot attend the live event.

Each class is $125, or $85 for current subscribers or current and past Weekly Writes participants.

The 2022 Author Postcard Auction is Open!

November 7, 2022 News, News and Events

It’s that time of year again: bid for a personalized, handwritten postcard from your favorite author in The Common’s ninth annual author postcard auction! The personalization of the postcards makes them fantastic gifts, just in time for the holidays. Online bidding is open now, and closes at noon on November 30th.

Join in on the fun this year for a chance to receive a postcard from New York Times-bestsellers, National Book Award-winners, Man Booker Prize finalists, and Pulitzer Prize-winners and finalists. In the past few years, authors have famously gone all out with their postcards: expect to receive anything from long letters to drawings and doodles to haikus. This year, we also have singer-songwriters, cartoonists, and more!

Participating authors include literary powerhouses and popular favorites such as Fran Lebowitz, David Sedaris, Alison Bechdel, Neil Gaiman, Donna Tartt, Andrew Sean Greer, Anthony Doerr, and George Saunders. We also have songwriters Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), Craig Finn (The Hold Steady), Natalie Merchant, and Amanda Shires (The Highwomen). We’ve even got New Yorker cartoonist Chris Ware!

Winning bids are tax-deductible donations. All proceeds go to The Common Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to publishing and promoting art and literature from global, diverse voices.

If you’re interested in supporting The Common but don’t want to bid, click here to donate.

Read Excerpts by the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2022 Finalists

September 15, 2022 News and Events

The ethos of the modern world is defined by immigrants. Their stories have always been an essential component of our cultural consciousness, from Isaac Bashevis Singer to Isabel Allende, from Milan Kundera to Yiyun Li. In novels, short stories, memoirs, and works of journalism, immigrants have shown us what resilience and dedication we’re capable of, and have expanded our sense of what it means to be global citizens. In these times of intense xenophobia, it is more important than ever that these boundary-crossing stories reach the broadest possible audience.

Now in its seventh year, the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing supports the voices of immigrant writers whose works straddle cultural divides, embrace the multicultural makeup of our society, and interrogate questions of identity in a global society. This prize awards $10,000 and publication with Restless Books to a debut writer. This year’s judges, Tiphanie Yanique, Deepak Unnikrishnan, and Ilan Stavans, have selected the below four finalists. Click on the links in each section to read excerpts from their books.

Call for Submissions: Writing from the Farmworker Community

August 15, 2022 News, News and Events

The deadline for this call has been extended to February 17.

The Common, in collaboration with guest co-editor Miguel M. Morales, will publish a portfolio of writing from the farmworker and farm laborer community: the migrant, seasonal, and often immigrant laborers who make up much of the US agricultural workforce. Submissions are now open.

Para leer este anuncio en español haga clic aquí.

The Common Awarded 2022 Amazon Literary Partnership Grant

July 20, 2022 News and Events

We are pleased to announce that The Common has been selected as a 2022 Literary Magazine Fund Grant Recipient, awarded 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.

Weekly Writes Summer 2022: Accountable You

June 15, 2022 News and Events, Weekly Writes

Signups for Weekly Writes Summer 2022 have now closed. If you’d like to hear about our next round of Weekly Writes, please register your interest here.

Weekly Writes is a ten-week program designed to help you create original place-based writing, beginning July 18.

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!

The Common Young Writers Program Opens Applications for Summer 2022

April 26, 2022 News and Events

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 25-August 5.

The cost of the two-week program is $725 for Level I, and $875 for Level II. Full and partial need-based tuition waivers are available for both levels; we hope that no student will let financial difficulty prevent them from applying. Tuition waivers will be awarded to students with strong applications who cannot attend the program without financial assistance. In the application, students will have the opportunity to briefly describe their financial circumstances and state the amount they could afford to pay, if any, if accepted into the program. No tax returns or other documentation is required.

Click here for more information and details on how to apply.

Issue 23 Virtual Launch Party

April 18, 2022 News and Events

The Common Spring Launch Party

Wednesday, May 4, 2022
5:00 pm
Via Zoom

On May 4th at 5pm EDT, join The Common for the virtual celebration of Issue 23! We welcome fiction writer Fernando Flores, poet Tina Cane, Palestinian writer Eyad Barghuthy, and Arabic translator Nashwa Gowanlock for brief readings and conversation about place, culture, and translation. The event will be hosted by the magazine’s editor in chief Jennifer Acker, in partnership with the Amherst College Creative Writing Center and Arts at Amherst Initiative.

Please Register in Advance for the Virtual Event. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the event.

Register Here

2022 Festival of Debut Authors

April 7, 2022 News and Events

Join The Common’s special events team on April 13th at 7:00pm for our 2022 Festival of Debut Authors, an evening devoted to emerging talents! The celebration will highlight poets and prose writers Priyanki Sacheti, Jeremy Michael Clark, Hiten Samtani, Danielle Ola, Carlie Hoffman, and Amalia Gladhart.

Hosted by Ben Shattuck and Sara Elkamel, the festival will feature readings and conversation, and aims to raise scholarship funds for the magazine’s Young Writers Program.

“The Old Man of Kusumpur” Wins O. Henry Prize 2022

April 7, 2022 News and Events

We are thrilled to announce that “The Old Man of Kusumpur,” written by Amar Mitra and translated from the Bengali by Anish Gupta, has been selected for the O. Henry Prize for 2022. The story was originally published in The Common Online. An anthology of the winning stories, edited by Valeria Luiselli, will be released this September from Anchor.

This is the first year the O. Henry Prize series has considered fiction in translation. In the prize announcement, series editor Jenny Minton Quigley writes, “If stories give us a window through which to momentarily enter the soul of another person, then translated stories magically transcend the limits of the language that has shaped our consciousness.“

View the full list of winners and read more about the prize at LitHub.

Congratulations to Amar, Anish, and all the winners!

News and Events

Craft Classes: Translation, Nonfiction, Revision, and Poetic Form

**Give your writing a boost this winter. Join The Common for a series of craft classes with these literary luminaries.**

Boris Dralyuk: “Extraordinary Measures: Translating Formal Poetry” [register]

Anna Badkhen: “Writing about Place: Geography, belonging, historical context, and the implications of our gaze” [register]

Megha Majumdar: “Demystifying Publishing and Being Your Own Best Editor” [register]

Zeina Hashem Beck: “The Ghazal and the Poetic Leap” [register]

The 2022 Author Postcard Auction is Open!

Read Excerpts by the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2022 Finalists

Call for Submissions: Writing from the Farmworker Community

The deadline for this call has been extended to February 17.

The Common Awarded 2022 Amazon Literary Partnership Grant

Weekly Writes Summer 2022: Accountable You

Weekly Writes is a ten-week program designed to help you create original place-based writing, beginning July 18.

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!

The Common Young Writers Program Opens Applications for Summer 2022

Issue 23 Virtual Launch Party

The Common Spring Launch Party

Register Here

2022 Festival of Debut Authors

“The Old Man of Kusumpur” Wins O. Henry Prize 2022

Discover the extraordinary in The Common.