The Common

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 Some may think the notion of place outdated or unimportant given our globally mobile populations and technology-driven careers.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]

"Those incredibly long notes / bending far back into silence."Delve into the waters of this month's poetry feature! Lisa...
25/09/2025

"Those incredibly long notes / bending far back into silence."

Delve into the waters of this month's poetry feature! Lisa Asagi explores whales and whale-calls in this collection of poems and sculptures. Click the link below!

LISA ASAGI "No one knows why / water becomes rain / only the how / and maybe the where"

24/09/2025

In "The Garden of the Gods," Eli Rodriguez Fielder takes a trip through the heart of the Midwest, navigating parenting, road trip mishaps, and the tension of being q***r family in the current political climate.

Read our latest dispatch now: thecommononline.org/the-garden-of-the-gods/.

"You say you just stumbled on my story like a tripwire? And you didn't mean to be here at all?"Phoebe Hyde's metafiction...
17/09/2025

"You say you just stumbled on my story like a tripwire? And you didn't mean to be here at all?"

Phoebe Hyde's metafictional piece, "Raspberries," draws readers into an especially dark and intimate common: a kitchen, a yard, a basement in someone else's wartime. Check it out below!

PHOEBE HYDE You say you stepped over my trip line of a story by accident? You were just scanning the shelves or pages or screen for a little something light and didn’t think you’d be rattled by…

"It’s easier now to see / deep into the woods"On our website, Phillis Levin's gentle "December Tanka" poem published in ...
16/09/2025

"It’s easier now to see / deep into the woods"

On our website, Phillis Levin's gentle "December Tanka" poem published in Issue 29 now features a recording by the author. Give it a listen, and let the chill of December wash over you in these hotter days.

PHILLIS LEVIN Light snow, bare branches. / It’s easier now to see / Deep into the woods, / Loss upon loss settling / Under a lattice of ice. /

Your favorite place-based magazine is coming to the Brooklyn Book Festival!Join us at Books Are Magic for a panel discus...
12/09/2025

Your favorite place-based magazine is coming to the Brooklyn Book Festival!

Join us at Books Are Magic for a panel discussion and Q&A on themes of immigration and belonging, plus a book signing.

Featuring Emily Everett, managing editor and author of the Reese’s Book Club Pick "All That Life Can Afford"; Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, author of the novel "Mutual Interest"; Annell López, author of the story collection "I’ll Give You a Reason"; and Ananda Lima, author of "Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil."

📍122 Montague Street, Brooklyn.
🕖 7PM
This event is free and open to the public. RSVP below!

Your Favorite Indie Bookstore!

"Visitors passing through on the way to the living room might exclaim 'Who’s reading The History of Lycanthropy? Or All ...
11/09/2025

"Visitors passing through on the way to the living room might exclaim 'Who’s reading The History of Lycanthropy? Or All About Tornadoes?'"

Jim Shepard's heartfelt essay "The Acrobat" details a childhood growing up with books, and a father's desire to reconnect through language. Read this entry from our Reading Life series, on our website now!

JIM SHEPARD And Shep looked only a little chagrined, like someone had asked why he had never become an acrobat, and allowed as how he was sure it was very impressive, given how many…

"Slapping your thighs, “Ta’a, ta’a, ta’a,” you’d say to the lovebirds we raised, “Come, come, come,” and they’d fly, all...
10/09/2025

"Slapping your thighs, “Ta’a, ta’a, ta’a,” you’d say to the lovebirds we raised, “Come, come, come,” and they’d fly, all three of them, out their cages in a flurry and land on your breasts, climb your gold chains, nestle against your cheeks."

Aya Labnieh's dream-dispatch between Anaheim, CA, and Damscus, Syria, revisits the loss of an "Ur-Mother."

You raised me, tayteh, rocking me in your lap, spooning Quranic verses into my little ears, scrubbing the living daylights out of me in the bathtub. Slapping your thighs, “Ta’a, ta’a, ta’a,” you’d…

September has arrived. Ring in the new month by reading this conversation between TC Contributors Phillis Levin and Dian...
08/09/2025

September has arrived. Ring in the new month by reading this conversation between TC Contributors Phillis Levin and Diane Mehta as they unfurl the catalysts and contours that define their writing.

DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN This conversation took place over the course of weeks—over daily phone calls and long emails, meals when they were in the same place, and a weekend in the Connecticut countryside. The poets share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, ex...

"Not an act, not a consequence, but life."Against a violent backdrop of color, a man journeys to a waterfall in Daniela ...
04/09/2025

"Not an act, not a consequence, but life."

Against a violent backdrop of color, a man journeys to a waterfall in Daniela Alcívar Bellolio's short story, translated by Jack Rockwell. Read below!

DANIELA ALCIVAR BELLOLIO The image came to him all the time, uncontrollably, relentlessly: a face, combining incomprehension and terror perfectly, as though they were a natural combination. Pain was almost absent from this mixture, though he was certain that there, too, must have been pain.

"I’d shove the scrambled eggs around my plate. You’re like me: easily spooked, boyish, with an awkward smile. We did our...
03/09/2025

"I’d shove the scrambled eggs around my plate. You’re like me: easily spooked, boyish, with an awkward smile. We did our best to tell each other something of our feelings."

Luchik Belau-Lorberg's epistolary dispatch, "From IHOP," revisits the strange intimacies of dining in a liminal space. Read it online below.

IHOP made sense for us both. Like all quintessentially American fast food chains, it’s instrumental, noncommital, infinitely replicable. In other words—simple, safe, unmournable by design.

"My obsession with this cloth also was what made it so difficult to write this essay."In this month’s podcast, Lily Lloy...
29/08/2025

"My obsession with this cloth also was what made it so difficult to write this essay."

In this month’s podcast, Lily Lloyd Burkhalter talks about how her time in Cameroon drove her Issue 29 essay.

LILY LLOYD BURKHALTER Lily Lloyd Burkhalter speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her essay “Raffia Memory,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. Lily talks about traveling to the Cameroon Grassfields to research the rituals and production of ndop, a traditional dyed cloth ...

“everything you didn’t have time to take / was like a ransom paid / for an incredibly fortunate life / for boisterous ev...
28/08/2025

“everything you didn’t have time to take / was like a ransom paid / for an incredibly fortunate life / for boisterous evenings and slow soft awakenings“

Read a selection of poems from Anna Malihon’s forthcoming collection on love and nature, on the experience of becoming a refugee, translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings.

ANNA MALIHON The girl with a bullet in her stomach / runs across the highway to the forest / runs without saying goodbye / through the news, the noble mold of lofty speeches / through history, geography, /curfew, a day, a century She is so young that the wind carries her over the long boulevard...

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