The Common

The Common is a literary journal based at Amherst College. We publish literature and visual art. In short, we seek a modern sense of place.

Finding the extraordinary in the common has long been the mission of literature. Inspired by this mission and the role of the town common, a public gathering place for the display and exchange of ideas, The Common seeks to recapture an old idea. The Common publishes fiction, essays, poetry, documentary vignettes, and images that embody particular times and places both real and imagined; from deser

ts to teeming ports; from Winnipeg to Beijing; from Earth to the Moon: literature and art powerful enough to reach from there to here. Used for decades to describe the tangible local environments and rootedness in works by authors like Faulkner, Frost, and Welty, the idea of a sense of place has fallen out of fashion. Some may think the notion of place outdated or unimportant given our globally mobile populations and technology-driven careers. But these characteristics mean that sense of place is more important now than ever. In our hectic and sometimes alienating world, themes of place provoke us to reflect on our situations and both comfort and fascinate us. Sense of place is not provincial nor old fashioned. It is a characteristic of great literature from all ages around the world. It is, simply, the feeling of being transported, of “being there.” The Common aims to renew and reenergize our literary and artistic sense of place. The Common is published in print biannually from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Ours is a small community with far-reaching ideas. We’re a place of farmers, professors, immigrants, liberals, conservatives, dairy cows, to***co plants, strip malls, and Victorian and Brutalist architecture. We have a rich literary history and support a vibrant diversity of artists and authors. The Common fosters regional creative spirit while stitching together a national and international community through publishing literature and art from around the world, bringing readers into a common space. Contact us at [email protected]

12/09/2024

"I think my relationship with mystery, or my fascination with it, is exactly what draws me to poetry."

Don't miss an interview between Theresa Monteiro and Abbie Kiefer, two poets who recently published their debut collections.

ABBIE KIEFER Grief can feel like a low hum or a fog—always there, always making you aware of its presence, but in a way that doesn’t require you to examine it. I knew, that if I wanted to write meaningfully about loss, I’d have to think closely about its distinctive shape. What particular...

12/08/2024

“The three of you get into the car. The girls buckle their seatbelts. You turn the key. The spark plug ignites the fuel in the combustion chamber. You depart. It is only thanks to fire that you’re moving.”

Don’t miss “There’s Still Oxygen” by Carlota Gurt, a prose piece exploring fire, movement, and motherhood.

CARLOTA GURT On June 6, 1981, the department store El Águila, located on the Plaça de la Universitat, burned to the ground. The fire was talked about all over. The mythical building, crowned by…

12/07/2024

"Bathed in cream, I transmuted hayricks into silk and mirrors. / I ate and destroyed, seeking relief from my depression."

Read more from Campbell McGrath's "Europa," a poem from Issue 28.

CAMPBELL MCGRATH I wore a crown. I shat out New Worlds. I fu**ed countesses / and courtesans, ballerinas and dairy-buttered damsels. / This century will be my last. The Era of Titanic Peasants /…

12/05/2024

"I always warned my mother that I wouldn’t stay in that house for a single day after I turned eighteen, and that, when I started university, I would never go back, no matter what happened to the place."

Don't miss reading Nashwa Nasreldin's translation of SIDE ENTRANCE TO THE HOUSE, by Amal al Saeedi! In this story, we follow the narrator back into her family home and see how the home becomes just as much of a character as the narrator.

AMAL AL SAEEDI I always warned my mother that I wouldn’t stay in that house for a single day after I turned eighteen, and that, when I started university, I would never go back, no matter what…

12/04/2024

A big thank you to Poetry Daily for featuring Amalia Bueno's beautiful Issue 27 poem "Herman's Bones", one of three Hawai‘i Creole poems published in our spring issue!

https://poems.com/poem/hermans-bones/

Read more on our website ➡️

AMALIA BUENO Da ocean like us know we all going die. / She stay keeping all our bones. / I seen da wave take ’em / den bring ’em to da shore / den take ’em back out again. / Plenny bones, / and…

12/03/2024

"He longed to describe the weightlessness that came in the middle of a con, when everything was right and nothing seemed to matter. That was a wonderful feeling, a floating feeling."

Check out Glenn Bertram's "The Con Artist!" Now live on our website!

GLENN BERTRAM When she was near him he felt close to God, or to the idea of a god, though they almost never talked about faith. She made him want to pray. He didn’t know why, but he tried it a few times when he was alone in his apartment. He didn’t pray for peace or joy ... He prayed the gi...

12/02/2024

We've never done this before, but with the busy holiday weekend, we've decided to extend the Author Postcard Auction 2 more days, till Wednesday, Dec. 4 at noon. Last chance to get your bids in!

The Common's 2024 Author Postcard Auction

11/30/2024

"Falling is an art. No one, not even the preacher, / can tell you the way to your knees in the night."

Read more from "Wedding Vows," an Issue 28 poem by Wyatt Townley.

WYATT TOWNLEY Walking is falling forward. Running // is falling faster. Watch the dark. It falls / so slowly while the sun yanks the rug // out from under you. At night some fall over / a book…

11/27/2024

"One man is fascinated by the wild cherry trees, / the other caught up in the fishing. / I am engrossed in geology, these misnamed / mountains."

Don't miss Sandy Longhorn's newly published poems in the most recent dispatch, "Three Poems from Arkansas"!

SANDY LONGHORN You are standing in an Ozark oasis, / the park interpreter tells our tiny group / of three strangers. We have walked / twenty yards onto the Ozark Highland Trail

11/25/2024

Don't miss a new recording of A.J. Rodriguez reading his Issue 27 story "Papel Picado."

A.J. RODRIGUEZ Right before her twenty-fifth birthday, Chacha shaved her head, shearing the long black hair I’d known my entire life down to tiny-ass stumps. Having not spoken to my half sister…

11/23/2024

“At first glance, in this case, the filial confidences about an erotic drawing are motivated by two ancient affinities: hunger and violence. The son is always hungry, a trait his mother applauds, and he always eats violently, voraciously, a trait he shares with his mother.”

Dive into Issue 28’s exploration of hunger in “Lunch at the Boqueria” by Mercè Ibarz.

MERCÈ IBARZ Close, so close he can already taste it. This afternoon he’ll become the owner of a secret. But first he’ll have lunch with his mother, who’s waiting for him at the restaurant in the…

11/22/2024

"Zaki argues that cynicism, not hope, is naïve."

In our November "What We're Reading" column, our contributors three books that will provide an escape during this busy season—and maybe even change your perspective.

CARSON WOLFE Exposition Ladies composes a love letter to the poorly scribbled female characters of Hollywood who exist solely to move the plot along. Each poem takes on the persona of one of…

11/21/2024

Hot off the digital presses: check out our November 2024 Poetry Feature, with new poems from G.C. Waldrep, Allison Funk, and Kevin O’Connor on the nature of wind, Andrew Wyeth’s painting "Snow Hill," and passing out after a wedding reception.

G. C. WALDREP I am listening to the slickened sound of the new / wind. It is a true thing. Or, it is true in its falseness. / It is the stuff against which matter’s music breaks. / Mural of the…

11/20/2024

Remember Toti O'Brien's interview with Dimitris Lyacos, award-winning author of POENA DAMNI?

Read their newest conversation over at the Michigan Quarterly Review!
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2024/11/flowing-from-an-absent-source-a-conversation-with-dimitris-lyacos/

DIMITRIS LYACOS Could this be the answer, then? A society transformed somehow into a library like this one, and us, serene, contemplative readers, sensitive and profound, interconnected by waves…

11/19/2024

Looking for a new read? Check out Stephen Hundley’s review of The Act of Contrition by Joseph Bathanti, a collection of stories that “reconstructs the mid-twentieth century in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh.”

www.thecommononline.org/kaleidoscope-of-the-heart-a-review-of-joseph-bathantis-the-act-of-contrition

11/18/2024

"Something banished, unhealthy, and beautiful. Lost to time."

Looking for a quick Monday-morning read?

Check out David Ryan's new flash piece at TC Online, which explores the memories woven into a vintage shirt.

DAVID RYAN He'd forgotten this shirt for many years, just another drifting article of faith, as the smaller artifacts of the last couple of decades have been subsumed, lost beneath the greater accrual of a pain fused to the loneliness, the unbearable gathering of what Jonathan sees as Now in li...

11/18/2024

"The sky is pink and internal behind you, / and you are an outline of a thing, Jane, // a thing that happened here."

Catie Rosemurgy's new Issue 28 poem "Diorama 1871 (say her name four times)" is tender and precise.

CATIE ROSEMURGYWhile Jane never existed, / her sudden sexual hungers and more frequent tenderness / most likely did. / Oh, Jane. You aren’t a child anymore. / Here’s a pinewood doorway for you…

11/15/2024

Our annual Author Postcard Auction is open for bidding. Whose postcard will you get this year? Bestseller Ann Patchett? EGOT-winner Tony Kushner? Singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy? Pulitzer Prize-winner Viet Thanh Nguyen? Visit https://charityauction.bid/AuthorPostcards to bid!

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Applications are open for our two-week virtual program, for high school students interested in creative writing! Learn more at thecommononline.org/youngwriters.