Learn more about teaching The Common and request a free sample issue.

Discussion Questions:

What is your first encounter with this magazine, as an object?

What do you think about the physical and aesthetic features of the magazine: the weight, the paper stock, the cover, the cover art, the font? What, if anything, would you change?

How do you read it? In order? Piecemeal? How do you think this affects your reaction to the magazine?

How do pieces (poems, essays, stories, images) relate to each other? What is the effect of their placements on you as a reader?

Learn more about teaching The Common and request a free sample issue.

Group Assignment & Student-led Exercise: Divide students into small groups (trios work well) and give them a week to:

1. Meet together outside of class with their copies of The Common in hand;
2. Select, as a group, a poem they particularly like,
3. Prepare to read that poem aloud to the class, and
4. Design and lead an in-class writing exercise for their classmates and teacher that is inspired by a technique or aspect of that poem.

Learn more about teaching The Common and request a free sample issue.

Group Assignment & Student-led Exercise: Divide students into small groups (trios work well) and give them a week to:

1. Meet together outside of class with their copies of The Common in hand;
2. Select, as a group, a poem they particularly like,
3. Prepare to read that poem aloud to the class, and
4. Design and lead an in-class writing exercise for their classmates and teacher that is inspired by a technique or aspect of that poem.

Learn more about teaching The Common and request a free sample issue.

First Year Seminar: The Short Story at Home and Abroad

Adapted from Martha Cooley, Associate Professor of English, Adelphi University

Propose a new literary magazine:

1. Imagine a literary magazine (or journal, or review—use whichever term you prefer) that YOU would like to read on a regular basis.
2. Remember that a literary magazine values good writing and good thinking.  Its purpose is not commercial or professional; its purpose is to showcase new, high-quality writing.
3. Now pretend you’ll be the magazine’s founder and editor-in-chief. As such, you need to develop a “pitch”—that is, a brief, compelling description of the publication that you can offer to people who might be willing to help you make it happen.
4. What will you say to them when they ask, “What are your hopes and goals for this publication?”
5. Naturally, you’ll say that the quality of the writing will have to be consistently excellent—otherwise, why bother?  Beyond this essential requirement, think about what you would you like your new literary magazine to contain.