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  • Michael David Lukas, "More to the Story," The Common Magazine (Fall, 2025)
    2025/03/28
    Michael David Lukas speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his essay “More to the Story,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. Michael talks about his writing process for the essay, which began when a dark family mystery moved him to research a side of his family he’d never learned much about. He also discusses the revision stages of the piece, which included adding in details of the other side of the family—his mother’s parents—who were Holocaust survivors. We also talk about his time as a nightshift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and the new novel project he’s working on now. Michael David Lukas is the author of the international bestselling novel The Oracle of Stamboul, a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. His second novel, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction in 2018, the Sami Rohr Prize, and France’s best foreign novel prize. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. He lives in Oakland and teaches at San Francisco State University. ­­Read “More to the Story” in The Common at thecommononline.org/more-to-the-story. Learn more about Michael and his work at michaeldavidlukas.com. 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 at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is forthcoming April 1, 2025 from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    35 分
  • Gray Davidson Carroll, "Silent Spring," The Common magazine
    2025/02/28
    Poet Gray Davidson Carroll speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about their poem “Silent Spring,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. Gray talks about poetry as a way to witness and observe the world and how we experience it, and how it’s changing. Gray also discusses how they started writing poetry, how they approach drafting and revision, and how their work in public health fits with and complements their work in poetry. We also hear a reading of Gray’s first poem in The Common, “November 19, 2022,” about the Club Q nightclub shooting in Colorado Springs. Gray Davidson Carroll is a white, transfemme writer, dancer, singer, cold water plunger and (self-proclaimed) hot chocolate alchemist hailing from Brooklyn by way of western Massachusetts and other strange and forgotten places. They are the author of the poetry chapbook Waterfall of Thanks (Bottlecap Press, 2023), and their work has further appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, ONLY POEMS, Frontiers in Medicine and elsewhere. They have received fellowships from Brooklyn Poets and Columbia University and are currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at NYU. ­­Read Gray’s poems in The Common at thecommononline.org/tag/gray-davidson-carroll/ Learn more about Gray and their work at graydavidsoncarroll.com. 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 at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is forthcoming in April 2025 from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    42 分
  • Julia Sanches, "The Advice," The Common magazine
    2025/01/31
    Translator Julia Sanches speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about translating “The Advice,” a story by Irene Pujadas, which appears in The Common’s fall issue in a portfolio of writing by contemporary Catalan women. Julia talks about her translation process, and the importance of capturing the tone and style of a piece, like the understated absurdist humor in “The Advice.” Julia also discusses how she approaches collaboration with other translators, how she chooses the books and stories she wants to translate, and how starting her career at a literary agency gave her a crash course in the behind-the-scenes of publishing. Julia Sanches has translated close to thirty books from Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan into English, including works by Susana Moreira Marques, Munir Hachemi, and Eva Baltasar. She served as a judge for the 2024 National Book Award in Translated Literature, and was recently named an NEA Translation Fellow. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, she currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island. ­­Read Julia’s translations from Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese in The Common here. Learn more about Julia and her work at juliasanches.com. 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 at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is forthcoming in April 2025 from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    41 分
  • Megan Tennant, "Little Women," The Common magazine
    2024/11/29
    Megan Tennant speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “Little Women,” which appears in The Common’s brand new fall issue. Megan talks about the process of writing and revising this story, which explores the complex dynamics between two sisters in a religious family in South Africa after one sister gets engaged. Megan also discusses how she layered the beauty, atmosphere, and complicated history of South Africa’s Wild Coast into the story, and how she worked to balance subtlety and clarity when bringing together the story’s many threads. Megan Tennant is a writer based in Cape Town, South Africa. She holds master’s degrees in creative writing from the University of Cape Town and in London studies from Queen Mary University of London. ­­Read Megan’s story “Little Women” in The Common at thecommononline.org/little-women/. 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 at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is forthcoming in April 2025 from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    41 分
  • Kevin Dean, "Patron Saints" The Common Magazine
    2024/09/27
    Kevin Dean speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Patron Saints,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Kevin talks about the process of writing and revising this story, which follows a young American trying to find his place in Cairo, while the city roils with political uncertainty after the Arab Spring uprising. Kevin also discusses how it feels to write from memory, what he tries to capture when writing about place, and what projects he’s working on now. Kevin Dean is a writer currently based in Seattle, Washington. Previously, he lived in Cairo, Egypt, where he worked as an editor and studied Arabic. His writing has been published in The Common and The Rumpus. He co-authored a theatrical adaptation of the novel Taxi, by Khaled Al-Khamissi, which was performed live in Cairo in 2013 and published in Tahrir Tales: Plays from the Egyptian Revolution. He is at work on his first novel. ­­Read Kevin’s story “Patron Saints” in The Common at thecommononline.org/patron-saints. Follow Kevin on Instagram @KevinWilliamDean, and check out more at kevinwilliamdean.com. 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 at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    43 分
  • Maria de Caldas Antão, "My Freedom," The Common Magazine
    2024/08/30
    Maria de Caldas Antão speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her poem “ My Freedom,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Maria talks about how a casual comment inspired this poem, which explores the idea of freedom, and what it might mean to be free: personally, politically, physically, philosophically. Maria also discusses how she hears a sort of music when writing new poetry, and then chooses words, sounds, rhythms, and line breaks to put that musicality on the page. Maria de Caldas Antão lives in Lisbon, Portugal. She holds an MA in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University, and a degree in acting from Mountview Academy in London. She has participated in the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and received fellowships to attend the SLS and DISQUIET literary programs. She also has a translation from the Portuguese of a poem by Alberto de Lacerda forthcoming in The Common. ­­Read Maria’s poem “My Freedom” in The Common at thecommononline.org/my-freedom. 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 at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    38 分
  • A. J. Rodriguez, "Papel Picado," The Common Magazine (2024)
    2024/07/26
    A. J. Rodriguez speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Papel Picado,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. A.J. talks about the process of writing and revising this story, which explores a fraught moment in the life of a Latino high schooler struggling under the pressures of family, friendship, and expectation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A.J. also discusses how his writing has changed over time, and why he’s always writing toward not just a specific character’s experience but also the complex community of a place. A. J. Rodriguez is a Chicano fiction writer born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon’s MFA program and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and The Kerouac Project. His stories have won CRAFT’s Flash Fiction Contest, the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, second place in Salamander’s Fiction Contest, and the Kinder/Crump Award for Short Fiction from Pleiades, judged by Jonathan Escoffery. His fiction also appears in New England Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. He is the forty-third annual Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. ­­Read A.J.’s story “Papel Picado” in The Common at thecommononline.org/papel-picado. Follow A.J. on Instagram and Twitter @soyajrodriguez. 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 at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    48 分
  • Mayada Ibrahim (trans.), “Symphony of the South," The Common magazine (2024)
    2024/05/31
    Mayada Ibrahim speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her translation of “Symphony of the South,” a short story by Tahir Annour that appears in The Common’s most recent issue, in a portfolio of writing in Arabic from Chad, South Sudan, and Eritrea. Mayada talks about the process of translating this piece, including working with the author and TC Arabic Fiction Editor Hisham Bustani. She also discusses gravitating toward translation as a way to reintegrate Arabic into her life, after years of studying and learning in English. Her translation of Forgive Me, a novel set in Zanzibar and co-translated with her father, will be out in the UK this year. Mayada Ibrahim is a literary translator based in Queens, New York, with roots in Khartoum and London. She works between Arabic and English. Her translations have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published by Archipelago Books, Dolce Stil Criollo, and 128 Lit. She is managing editor at Tilted Axis Press. ­­Read “Symphony of the South” in The Common at thecommononline.org/symphony-of-the-south. To learn more about Mayada and her work, visit mayadaibrahim.com. 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 at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    26 分