Liz DeWolf speaks to Emily Everett about her story “Ex Situ,” which appear in The Common’s spring issue. The story follows an American living in Istanbul, navigating the end of a relationship, alongside the appeal and alienation of living abroad in a layered, complex city. Liz also discusses her process and revision methods, the themes she often returns to, and her work as a nonfiction book editor.

Liz DeWolf writes fiction and edits nonfiction books about politics and culture. Originally from Massachusetts, she lives in Los Angeles and is currently at work on a novel and a collection of short stories. Her fiction has appeared in The Common, New England Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere.

­­Read Liz’s story in The Common here.

Learn more about her work here.

*

The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine here, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook.

Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford was a 2025 Reese’s Book Club pick and longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column, the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

DON’T FALL IN LOVE.

That’s the only rule.

In this world, everyone knows their death date. If you’re rich, you can check in to a resort to have the greatest final few weeks of your life, in five-star luxury.

Regan works at one of these resorts as a “Juliet”. Her next client is Jude, who has a week to live. Regan’s job is simple: make Jude feel as though he has found true love before he dies.

But when a fake romance starts to become something else, can they take on Fate together – before Jude's death date catches up with them?

Tune in to this interview about Just Another Dead Boy (Walker Books, 2026)

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt (SUNY Press, 2026) is an edited collection exploring utopias ad dystopias in films and literature. It challenges readers, in these uniquely dystopian times, to reevaluate their ideas about utopia and dystopia.

The book brings together film, literary, and utopian studies scholars from across the world. As an interdisciplinary collection, it covers a wide range of utopias and dystopias, from those of visionaries as varied as William Morris and George Lucas to such fresh new and distinctive voices like Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and N. K. Jemisin.

Contributors dismantle myths about utopian and dystopian film, literature, and television. Several chapters analyse the nature of utopian and dystopian fiction and its important relationship to our present moment. What's the future of utopia? What does it mean to be a utopia today? Do we still need the warnings of dystopia?

Whether through ecocritical work, work aimed at decolonizing utopian studies, debates about our relationship with technology and the nonhuman, forms of utopian hope and pessimism, or new thinking about cinematic and literary techniques and production, the essays offer fresh insight into the subject area and something to interest any reader.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Now I'm Photogenic and Other Stories I Tell Myself (Black Lawrence Press, 2026) is a collection of ten playfully strange and unsettling stories, some realistic and some surreal. The characters in these pages feel alienated: from their communities and relationships, on the streets of wealthy suburbs, at the doctor's office, in classrooms and swimming pools, in their own homes and their own skin. They wonder: is it better to be alone, imagining the life you want, as fantastic and strange as you wish, or is it better to be in the real world with real people, even if that means you might be hurt, embarrassed, and misunderstood? What if the intensity of it all feels equally threatening and glorious?

In these stories, an angry father wishes he could be loving and gentle; a seven-year-old girl wants to be better at school and thin like her sister; an uncoordinated, awkward teenager is training to be an Olympic athlete. What would happen, we are left to wonder, if these characters brought their wild sides out into the light? What if they stopped trying to be normal?

Jill Rosenberg is a graduate of Vassar College and the MFA Program at the University of Montana. Her fiction has been published by the Kenyon Review, Swamp Pink, Black Warrior Review, and other journals. She currently writes and teaches in Montclair, New Jersey, where she also works with rescued cats and practices practicing Buddhism.

Recommended Books:

• Paul Russell, Sea of Tranquility
• Margo Steines, Brutalities

Chris Holmes is Professor of Literatures in English at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kabwe, Zambia: Sali, a working mother of three, stands trial for the murder of her husband, Kasunga. The prosecutor claims Sali shot him after a heated fight in their bedroom. There are no witnesses. Sali pleads not guilty.

But her story does not begin with a gun. It begins fourteen years earlier--with her rebellion against the pressure to find a husband, her affair with a wealthy married man called Doc, and her discovery that she's pregnant on the same day of Doc's unexpected death.To avoid the shame of being an unwed mother, Sali accepts Kasunga's proposal, and finds herself suddenly thrust into the shipikisha club: her society's expectations that it is a wife's duty to endure. Over the years, Sali navigates her husband's infidelities and alcohol-filled nights, their money troubles, and her postpartum depression in silence. Until the day she speaks her mind, and Kasunga puts a gun in her face.

The trial is a national scandal. Many are called to testify--the maid, Kasunga's mother, and Ntashé, Sali's fifteen-year-old daughter. Even after Sali's diary is dissected and laid bare for all to see, Sali calls no witnesses to her defense. With Kasunga gone, only Sali will ever know the truth. But is the truth enough?

Told through the rotating perspectives of Sali, Ntashé, and Sali's mother Peggy, The Shipikisha Club (Cassava Republic Press, 2026) is a riveting story of gender politics in Zambia and the world at large--a must-read for fans of Peace Adzo Medie, Abi Daré, and Tayari P. Jones.

Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian attorney and award-winning editor and writer, known for her novel The Mourning Bird and her collection of short stories titled Obligations to the Wounded. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in law, as well as a master's in fine arts. She is currently pursuing a PhD in gender, women and sexuality studies at the University of Minnesota.

Jessie Cohen holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in African History. She is the Editor-In-Chief of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On September 24, 2021, Rachel Eliza Griffiths married her husband, the novelist Salman Rushdie. On the same day, hundreds of miles away, Griffiths’ closest friend and chosen sister, the poet Kamilah Aisha Moon, who was expected to speak at the wedding, died suddenly. Eleven months later, as Griffiths attempted to piece together her life as a newlywed with heartbreak in one hand and immense love in the other, a brutal attack nearly killed her husband. As trauma compounded trauma, Griffiths realized that in order to survive her grief, she would need to mourn not only her friend, but the woman she had been on her wedding day, a woman who had also died that day.

In the process of rebuilding a self, Griffiths chronicles her friendship with Moon, the seventeen years since their meeting at Sarah Lawrence College. Together, they embraced their literary foremothers—Lucille Clifton, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, to name a few—and fought to embrace themselves as poets, artists, and Black women. Alongside this unbreakable bond, Griffiths weaves the story of her relationship with Rushdie, of the challenges they have faced and the unshakeable devotion that endures.

In The Flower Bearers (Random House, 2026), Griffiths inscribes the trajectories of two transformational relationships with grace and honesty, chronicling the beauty and pain that comes with opening oneself fully to love. This is a conversation not to be missed.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a multi-media artist, poet, and novelist. She received the MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and is the recipient of numerous fellowships including Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Kimbilio, Cave Canem Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and Yaddo. Her literary and visual work has been widely published in journals, magazines, anthologies, and periodicals including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Progressive, The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, Callaloo, Poets & Writers, American Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, The Writer’s Chronicle, Transition, American Poet, Mosaic, Indiana Review, Ecotone, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, Best American Poetry (2020, 2021), The New York Review of Books, BOMB! Magazine, and many others. You can find Rachel on Instagram.

Learn more about the Torch 20th Anniversary celebration here.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts. 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Alice Sees Ghosts (Galiot Press, 2026), Daisy Rockwell tells an unforgettable story of love, grief and wanting closure. A profound exploration of people trying to piece their broken selves together, this novel celebrates life in all its guises, and what comes after.

Alice's ancestral home is crumbling. As her grandmother lies on her deathbed, and her relationships with her alcoholic mother and extended family members grow strained, Alice finds herself haunted by a spectral visitor. The ghost's cryptic and friendly whispers lead her on a journey to India, where long-buried family secrets lie in wait.

Her fiancé, psychiatrist Ronit Roy, is troubled by Alice's obsession with the supernatural. Yet, he finds himself irresistibly drawn into the labyrinth of secrets entwining her family's past. Together, they embark on a mission to India, seeking answers that lie at the precarious intersection of the living and the dead.

As the future beckons, Alice finally confronts a question that will change her life: will unearthing these hidden truths bring her closer to understanding herself and mend her familial bonds, or will the weight of the past prevent her from moving forward?

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.