The Common
@commonmag.bsky.social
The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, poetry, and art with a modern sense of place. Based at Amherst College, we highlight writers and work from around the world.
Weekly Writes Vol. 10 kicks off on January 26, just in time to help you stay accountable on your New Year’s resolutions and 2026 goals! Sign up below!
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January 9, 2026 at 7:32 PM
Weekly Writes Vol. 10 kicks off on January 26, just in time to help you stay accountable on your New Year’s resolutions and 2026 goals! Sign up below!
buff.ly/dJXKM5T
buff.ly/dJXKM5T
Alex Behm's dispatch from Copenhagen snags on the details of daily life: a snapped tree limb, the changing of seasons, things bought at the store.
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January 7, 2026 at 2:42 PM
Alex Behm's dispatch from Copenhagen snags on the details of daily life: a snapped tree limb, the changing of seasons, things bought at the store.
Reposted by The Common
The wait is over. Welcome to the 2026 Virtual Writers Retreat Faculty! 🥳
Check the 🔗 in our bio to read more about our faculty and the bright future of the Writers Retreat!
Applications will open November 21, 2025-January 8, 2026.
Don't miss this one. Things may never be the same. 👀
Check the 🔗 in our bio to read more about our faculty and the bright future of the Writers Retreat!
Applications will open November 21, 2025-January 8, 2026.
Don't miss this one. Things may never be the same. 👀
November 18, 2025 at 8:18 PM
The wait is over. Welcome to the 2026 Virtual Writers Retreat Faculty! 🥳
Check the 🔗 in our bio to read more about our faculty and the bright future of the Writers Retreat!
Applications will open November 21, 2025-January 8, 2026.
Don't miss this one. Things may never be the same. 👀
Check the 🔗 in our bio to read more about our faculty and the bright future of the Writers Retreat!
Applications will open November 21, 2025-January 8, 2026.
Don't miss this one. Things may never be the same. 👀
"How strange, to see behind what I’d taken to be solid. A hidden space, suddenly exposed."
Listen to Rebecca Worby read her Issue 30 essay "Body Stories: On Miscarriage and Cancer," in a new recording available online now.
Listen to Rebecca Worby read her Issue 30 essay "Body Stories: On Miscarriage and Cancer," in a new recording available online now.
Body Stories: On Miscarriage and Cancer
REBECCA WORBY <br> Red, red blood, not the dark red of a period. I know this immediately even though I have only just had my first period in years, and as alarm bells go off in my mind, I begin to…
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January 6, 2026 at 3:01 PM
"How strange, to see behind what I’d taken to be solid. A hidden space, suddenly exposed."
Listen to Rebecca Worby read her Issue 30 essay "Body Stories: On Miscarriage and Cancer," in a new recording available online now.
Listen to Rebecca Worby read her Issue 30 essay "Body Stories: On Miscarriage and Cancer," in a new recording available online now.
In the kitchen, I cry to the sound of my mother’s sobs. / Count the injections I have left before the vials run out
Gray Davidson Carroll's "Anti-Aubade" captures the strange hereafter of sunrise on November 6th, 2024.
Read the full Issue 30 piece online. buff.ly/L7E4VTJ
Gray Davidson Carroll's "Anti-Aubade" captures the strange hereafter of sunrise on November 6th, 2024.
Read the full Issue 30 piece online. buff.ly/L7E4VTJ
January 4, 2026 at 2:01 PM
In the kitchen, I cry to the sound of my mother’s sobs. / Count the injections I have left before the vials run out
Gray Davidson Carroll's "Anti-Aubade" captures the strange hereafter of sunrise on November 6th, 2024.
Read the full Issue 30 piece online. buff.ly/L7E4VTJ
Gray Davidson Carroll's "Anti-Aubade" captures the strange hereafter of sunrise on November 6th, 2024.
Read the full Issue 30 piece online. buff.ly/L7E4VTJ
“I am myself a member of myself / and every time I search within I find / another me, mysteriously aligned”
Pedro Poitevin’s “The Universal Set", translated by Philip Nikolayev, is a featured poem in Issue 30 of The Common, available to read online now. buff.ly/XQEOrbn
Pedro Poitevin’s “The Universal Set", translated by Philip Nikolayev, is a featured poem in Issue 30 of The Common, available to read online now. buff.ly/XQEOrbn
January 4, 2026 at 2:01 PM
“I am myself a member of myself / and every time I search within I find / another me, mysteriously aligned”
Pedro Poitevin’s “The Universal Set", translated by Philip Nikolayev, is a featured poem in Issue 30 of The Common, available to read online now. buff.ly/XQEOrbn
Pedro Poitevin’s “The Universal Set", translated by Philip Nikolayev, is a featured poem in Issue 30 of The Common, available to read online now. buff.ly/XQEOrbn
"Poetry is a feeling worth getting down, a process that begins with attending and listening"
Hear Teju Cole discuss his early influences, dropping out of med school to become a writer, his introduction to photography, and the value of travel in his Issue 30 interview. Check it out below!
Hear Teju Cole discuss his early influences, dropping out of med school to become a writer, his introduction to photography, and the value of travel in his Issue 30 interview. Check it out below!
The Epiphany in the Ordinary: An Interview with Teju Cole
TEJU COLE <br> I really believe in the novel as an innovative form. Yet I didn’t want novelty for its own sake. There had to be something necessary in how I approached the narrating. For me, this was…
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January 3, 2026 at 7:01 PM
"Poetry is a feeling worth getting down, a process that begins with attending and listening"
Hear Teju Cole discuss his early influences, dropping out of med school to become a writer, his introduction to photography, and the value of travel in his Issue 30 interview. Check it out below!
Hear Teju Cole discuss his early influences, dropping out of med school to become a writer, his introduction to photography, and the value of travel in his Issue 30 interview. Check it out below!
"Tomorrow— // what a difficult word—interrupted and intercepted; / and tomorrow, all that we imagined."
In glances at bullfrogs and oak trees, Marc Vincenz nails a feeling of interconnectedness with all life in his Issue 30 poem "A Meeting on Waterways," now available online.
In glances at bullfrogs and oak trees, Marc Vincenz nails a feeling of interconnectedness with all life in his Issue 30 poem "A Meeting on Waterways," now available online.
A Meeting on Waterways
MARC VINCENZ <br> It seems all the light of morning / has descended here where it’s usually dark / and frogs raise their heads in the bulrushes, / where the last sounds swarm among the oaks. /…
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January 3, 2026 at 3:02 PM
"Tomorrow— // what a difficult word—interrupted and intercepted; / and tomorrow, all that we imagined."
In glances at bullfrogs and oak trees, Marc Vincenz nails a feeling of interconnectedness with all life in his Issue 30 poem "A Meeting on Waterways," now available online.
In glances at bullfrogs and oak trees, Marc Vincenz nails a feeling of interconnectedness with all life in his Issue 30 poem "A Meeting on Waterways," now available online.
Beautiful poetry? Fascinating interviews? Engrossing fiction? Our readers loved it all this year. Close out 2025 with a list of our most-read pieces of the year and take some great writing into 2026! buff.ly/5ishQig
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December 29, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Beautiful poetry? Fascinating interviews? Engrossing fiction? Our readers loved it all this year. Close out 2025 with a list of our most-read pieces of the year and take some great writing into 2026! buff.ly/5ishQig
Pedro Poitevin’s “The Universal Set,” translated by Philip Nikolayev, is a larger-than-life declaration of existence.
You can read the poem, featured in Issue 30, online now.
You can read the poem, featured in Issue 30, online now.
The Universal Set
PEDRO POITEVIN <br> I am the madness of the grand design, / I am the limit of where reason goes, / I am the science behind metascience. // The endless universe of sets is mine, / and this includes…
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December 28, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Pedro Poitevin’s “The Universal Set,” translated by Philip Nikolayev, is a larger-than-life declaration of existence.
You can read the poem, featured in Issue 30, online now.
You can read the poem, featured in Issue 30, online now.
"They listen for rules but I give none. They tremble / with their little power. Say many lives lead nowhere. Say they huddle / within this town. Its pious blue."
Lauren Camp identifies the difficulty of teaching writing in "Small Mariners," now available online and in Issue 30.
Lauren Camp identifies the difficulty of teaching writing in "Small Mariners," now available online and in Issue 30.
Small Mariners
LAUREN CAMP <br> What is it like to be found? All these years on, I’ve never before been / to the edge of this rocky square state. I drive 41 through aura and wither / and slip into Golden then…
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December 27, 2025 at 7:02 PM
"They listen for rules but I give none. They tremble / with their little power. Say many lives lead nowhere. Say they huddle / within this town. Its pious blue."
Lauren Camp identifies the difficulty of teaching writing in "Small Mariners," now available online and in Issue 30.
Lauren Camp identifies the difficulty of teaching writing in "Small Mariners," now available online and in Issue 30.
"This is what novelists do. We bleed in public"
Novelist, photographer, and essayist, Teju Cole speaks to writing his latest novel, reading all 1,800 of Emily Dickinson's poems, the importance of art in time of catastrophe, and much more in a new interview. Find it in Issue 30 or at the link below!
Novelist, photographer, and essayist, Teju Cole speaks to writing his latest novel, reading all 1,800 of Emily Dickinson's poems, the importance of art in time of catastrophe, and much more in a new interview. Find it in Issue 30 or at the link below!
The Epiphany in the Ordinary: An Interview with Teju Cole
TEJU COLE <br> I really believe in the novel as an innovative form. Yet I didn’t want novelty for its own sake. There had to be something necessary in how I approached the narrating. For me, this was…
buff.ly
December 27, 2025 at 3:01 PM
"This is what novelists do. We bleed in public"
Novelist, photographer, and essayist, Teju Cole speaks to writing his latest novel, reading all 1,800 of Emily Dickinson's poems, the importance of art in time of catastrophe, and much more in a new interview. Find it in Issue 30 or at the link below!
Novelist, photographer, and essayist, Teju Cole speaks to writing his latest novel, reading all 1,800 of Emily Dickinson's poems, the importance of art in time of catastrophe, and much more in a new interview. Find it in Issue 30 or at the link below!
2026 is almost here! But before we kick off the new yea, let’s take a moment to recognize the writing that made this year so special. Check out our Most-read pieces of 2025, available for your perusal now!
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December 22, 2025 at 2:01 PM
2026 is almost here! But before we kick off the new yea, let’s take a moment to recognize the writing that made this year so special. Check out our Most-read pieces of 2025, available for your perusal now!
A kamikaze who would have dropped heavenly tons / on these civilians as on military echelons / and then been posthumously awarded // the highest orders!
Victor Neborak's "The Mosquito" (trans. John Hennessy & Ostap Kin) elegizes the military career of a pest.
Victor Neborak's "The Mosquito" (trans. John Hennessy & Ostap Kin) elegizes the military career of a pest.
Death of a Hero (The Mosquito)
VIKTOR NEBORAK <br> A kamikaze who would have dropped heavenly tons / on these civilians as on military echelons / and then been posthumously awarded // the highest orders! his name on honor lists! /…
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December 21, 2025 at 2:01 PM
A kamikaze who would have dropped heavenly tons / on these civilians as on military echelons / and then been posthumously awarded // the highest orders!
Victor Neborak's "The Mosquito" (trans. John Hennessy & Ostap Kin) elegizes the military career of a pest.
Victor Neborak's "The Mosquito" (trans. John Hennessy & Ostap Kin) elegizes the military career of a pest.
"I swallow. Set my eyes on 122 tender children, much smaller / than never-ending. At this age they are all swish and unconquerable hope."
Keep reading "Small Mariners" by Lauren Camp in our latest issue, as she grapples with what success means at a public speaking gig.
buff.ly/qZaU4og
Keep reading "Small Mariners" by Lauren Camp in our latest issue, as she grapples with what success means at a public speaking gig.
buff.ly/qZaU4og
Small Mariners
LAUREN CAMP <br> What is it like to be found? All these years on, I’ve never before been / to the edge of this rocky square state. I drive 41 through aura and wither / and slip into Golden then…
buff.ly
December 20, 2025 at 3:02 PM
"I swallow. Set my eyes on 122 tender children, much smaller / than never-ending. At this age they are all swish and unconquerable hope."
Keep reading "Small Mariners" by Lauren Camp in our latest issue, as she grapples with what success means at a public speaking gig.
buff.ly/qZaU4og
Keep reading "Small Mariners" by Lauren Camp in our latest issue, as she grapples with what success means at a public speaking gig.
buff.ly/qZaU4og
"Why go way out there? Pete asks, an edge of hysteria to his voice. Let’s just burn the tree on the front lawn. Tell the neighbors we’re protesting the hijacking of Christmas by capitalism.”
Read Tamas Dobozy’s “Faction of None,” featured in Issue 30, available online now. buff.ly/KiDcoH9
Read Tamas Dobozy’s “Faction of None,” featured in Issue 30, available online now. buff.ly/KiDcoH9
December 20, 2025 at 2:02 PM
"Why go way out there? Pete asks, an edge of hysteria to his voice. Let’s just burn the tree on the front lawn. Tell the neighbors we’re protesting the hijacking of Christmas by capitalism.”
Read Tamas Dobozy’s “Faction of None,” featured in Issue 30, available online now. buff.ly/KiDcoH9
Read Tamas Dobozy’s “Faction of None,” featured in Issue 30, available online now. buff.ly/KiDcoH9
"An exquisite fear lay amongst them, excitement, a spell"
The horrors and violence of ostracization are unforgettably depicted in Aaron Carpenter's translation of Theodora Bauer's Chikago. Check out an excerpted chapter of the novel in translation below!
The horrors and violence of ostracization are unforgettably depicted in Aaron Carpenter's translation of Theodora Bauer's Chikago. Check out an excerpted chapter of the novel in translation below!
Raid on the Roma Camp
THEODORA BAUER <br> "Katica only saw her sister angry once. That was a long time ago, she must have been seven or maybe eight. Her father was still alive. It was a cold winter evening, it got dark…
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December 18, 2025 at 7:03 PM
"An exquisite fear lay amongst them, excitement, a spell"
The horrors and violence of ostracization are unforgettably depicted in Aaron Carpenter's translation of Theodora Bauer's Chikago. Check out an excerpted chapter of the novel in translation below!
The horrors and violence of ostracization are unforgettably depicted in Aaron Carpenter's translation of Theodora Bauer's Chikago. Check out an excerpted chapter of the novel in translation below!
"who among us hasn’t pressed a finger into the scab / for that foreign roughness, that delicious, needling shaft of sunk cost"
Check out "Exodus" by Lauren Delapenha, and poems by Robert Cording, Rachel Hadas, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil, in our new feature!
thecommononline.org/december-202...
Check out "Exodus" by Lauren Delapenha, and poems by Robert Cording, Rachel Hadas, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil, in our new feature!
thecommononline.org/december-202...
December 2025 Poetry Feature #2: Lauren Delapenha, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Robert Cording, and Rachel Hadas
AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL <br> Sometimes when they were young, I felt like / I was underwater and couldn’t make out sounds / or reason or rhyme, only coral clicks and distant / whale songs. A shiver of ee...
thecommononline.org
December 18, 2025 at 3:28 PM
"who among us hasn’t pressed a finger into the scab / for that foreign roughness, that delicious, needling shaft of sunk cost"
Check out "Exodus" by Lauren Delapenha, and poems by Robert Cording, Rachel Hadas, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil, in our new feature!
thecommononline.org/december-202...
Check out "Exodus" by Lauren Delapenha, and poems by Robert Cording, Rachel Hadas, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil, in our new feature!
thecommononline.org/december-202...
"An olive taught refusal—
roots clasping dark without asking."
In our latest dispatch, Alaa Alqaisi writes from Gaza, from a moment when leaving wasn’t a choice but a matter of surviving genocide.
thecommononline.org/the-ground-t...
roots clasping dark without asking."
In our latest dispatch, Alaa Alqaisi writes from Gaza, from a moment when leaving wasn’t a choice but a matter of surviving genocide.
thecommononline.org/the-ground-t...
The Ground That Walks
ALAA ALQAISI <br> We stepped out with our eyes uncovered. / Gaza kept looking through them— / green tanks asleep on roofs, a stubborn gull, / water heavy with scales at dawn. // Nothing in us chose th...
thecommononline.org
December 17, 2025 at 4:47 PM
"An olive taught refusal—
roots clasping dark without asking."
In our latest dispatch, Alaa Alqaisi writes from Gaza, from a moment when leaving wasn’t a choice but a matter of surviving genocide.
thecommononline.org/the-ground-t...
roots clasping dark without asking."
In our latest dispatch, Alaa Alqaisi writes from Gaza, from a moment when leaving wasn’t a choice but a matter of surviving genocide.
thecommononline.org/the-ground-t...
“We should walk to the ocean every day,” / she says. “It is so close,” he agrees. / What if this is not the end, she thinks, / but their pulpy-sweet middle?”
Listen to Elizabeth Metzger read her Issue 30 Poem, “In Another Version", in a brand new recording available online now. buff.ly/QuVBZxD
Listen to Elizabeth Metzger read her Issue 30 Poem, “In Another Version", in a brand new recording available online now. buff.ly/QuVBZxD
In Another Version
ELIZABETH METZGER <br> Part of her knows he will withdraw again / once they get home. Part of her thinks / this is the new love she’s pined for. / They swing their real invisible children between…
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December 17, 2025 at 2:03 PM
“We should walk to the ocean every day,” / she says. “It is so close,” he agrees. / What if this is not the end, she thinks, / but their pulpy-sweet middle?”
Listen to Elizabeth Metzger read her Issue 30 Poem, “In Another Version", in a brand new recording available online now. buff.ly/QuVBZxD
Listen to Elizabeth Metzger read her Issue 30 Poem, “In Another Version", in a brand new recording available online now. buff.ly/QuVBZxD
This is so beautiful!! Thank you.
December 16, 2025 at 1:55 PM
This is so beautiful!! Thank you.
Reposted by The Common
This morning: cappuccino, confetti, & @commonmag.bsky.social !
December 4, 2025 at 2:56 PM
This morning: cappuccino, confetti, & @commonmag.bsky.social !
Last minute holiday gift hunting? A subscription to The Common makes a great gift! We'll notify the recipient and include your gift message. Starts at just $16. thecommon.app.neoncrm.com/forms/gift-s...
December 16, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Last minute holiday gift hunting? A subscription to The Common makes a great gift! We'll notify the recipient and include your gift message. Starts at just $16. thecommon.app.neoncrm.com/forms/gift-s...
In this recently published interview, Jenna Grace Sciuto and Nathaniel Ian Miller discuss Northern Spaces, Idiosyncratic Characters, the Beguiling Icelandic Landscape and how they come together in Miller's latest book “Red Dog Farm."
Read it online now! buff.ly/QDBroLS
Read it online now! buff.ly/QDBroLS
December 15, 2025 at 2:02 PM
In this recently published interview, Jenna Grace Sciuto and Nathaniel Ian Miller discuss Northern Spaces, Idiosyncratic Characters, the Beguiling Icelandic Landscape and how they come together in Miller's latest book “Red Dog Farm."
Read it online now! buff.ly/QDBroLS
Read it online now! buff.ly/QDBroLS
If I was nearby, he’d tell me to go inside. / Then, he’d resign, curtly quit, from God, // flick a Lucky at the old man’s feet, and / walk away.
Matt W. Miller's Issue 30 poem, "Oblation," makes peace with paternity. Read the full piece online at the link below.
buff.ly/tXm6Ksv
Matt W. Miller's Issue 30 poem, "Oblation," makes peace with paternity. Read the full piece online at the link below.
buff.ly/tXm6Ksv
December 14, 2025 at 7:01 PM
If I was nearby, he’d tell me to go inside. / Then, he’d resign, curtly quit, from God, // flick a Lucky at the old man’s feet, and / walk away.
Matt W. Miller's Issue 30 poem, "Oblation," makes peace with paternity. Read the full piece online at the link below.
buff.ly/tXm6Ksv
Matt W. Miller's Issue 30 poem, "Oblation," makes peace with paternity. Read the full piece online at the link below.
buff.ly/tXm6Ksv