commonmag.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Don't miss our recommendations for February 2025 reads! This month, contributors Katharine Halls, Thea Matthews, and @olgaz.bsky.social take your reading lists to Prague, Damascus, and New York City.

submitted 10 hours ago • 0 comments

TC Contributor Bob Johnson's debut story collection THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE has hit the shelves! Delve into the undercity of northern Indiana, "where men, women, and children find their way in the darkness."

submitted 10 hours ago • 0 comments

"you face an impossible choice / so you make a poem" Check out this vibrant and vicious excerpt from LitFest guest Diane Exavier's book, The Math of Saint Felix! https://buff.ly/3Xi9lXj

submitted 10 hours ago • 0 comments

"His conversations had a rhythm—his inquiry, my reply, his response, my reply, a new inquiry—that felt like a train you couldn’t disembark from." Read Lola Milholland's "Excerpt from Group Living and Other Recipes," to prepare for 2025 Litfest!

submitted 12 hours ago • 0 comments

Check out our latest dispatch: three poems from Marutha Nilam, tanslated from the Tamil by Thile Varghese. www.thecommononline.org/dispatch-from-marutha-nilam

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

We're excited to offer a preview of Ilan Stavan's collection of retold poems by Aztec ruler Nezahualcóyotl, forthcoming from @RestlessBooks!

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Issue 28 poem "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Matthew Tuckner contrasts a romantic memory with the stark, industrial imagery of a superfund site. https://www.thecommononline.org/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire/ 👔

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

"In my sleep, I had forgotten / memory alone, slips / April, remember that film we watched?" Read JinJin Xu's three poems, now published on TC Online! These poems are excerpted from her debut poetry chapbook, THERE IS STILL SINGING IN THE AFTERLIFE.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

"My partner pulls out his handcuffs / to handcuff the boy, / the boy whose wrists are like / two thin stocks of red tulips." Now on our website, hear Thea Matthews give voice to her poem "In Montgomery County," featured in Issue 28! Click the link below! https://www.thecommononline.org/in-montgom…

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

"Probably the girl will be allowed to ride her bike from here to the other side of the neighborhood. The new street will be hers, too, after all." Read from Sarah Sawyer's book, The Undercurrents, before you attend her events at this year's LitFest!

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Check out these haunting video poems from this year's LitFest guest Paisley Rekdal! To prepare for her event with Brandon Som in Conversation with Ruth Dickey on March 2nd, listen and watch past become present, bodies become bodies, at the link below. https://www.thecommononline.org/litfest-2025-e…

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Discover "Mantra 5," a powerful poem by Krikor Beledian, now available in English through the brilliant translation of IALA’s 2024 Israelyan English Translation Grant recipients, Taline Voskeritchian and Christopher Millis! ✍ 📚 Read it in @commonmag.bsky.social below!

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

“When it spreads out its pair of long / wings, innumerable small wings / follow suit.” Read “Land Grabbing Bird” by Sakthi Arulanandham and two other Tamil poems, translated by Thile Varghese in our latest dispatch. www.thecommononline.org/dispatch-from-marutha-nilam

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

"No one stops me, yet my hand retreats without exploring like I want to. The ghost of Dante’s weight haunts my palm." Don't forget to read Dan Heck's "Gently," a fictional essay that hauntingly exploring queer yearning and desire in Virginia Beach.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

"I imprint this image of my mom in my memory: leading the way, a bit stoned and giddy, speeding down a road toward the Kickapoo River as fast as she can." Read Lola Milholland's "Excerpt from Group Living and Other Recipes," as Litfest preparation!

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

@sean-carlson.bsky.social interviews @erinfornoff.bsky.social and @gphibbett.bsky.social in this interview at a literary fest in County Kerry, Ireland.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Matthew Tuckner's Issue 28 poem "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" magnifies a photograph to a monumental scale.

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

"my mother, my father. / Her skinny blue wrists, his ear caressing a cigarette. In the beginning, / it is already too late" Don't miss JinJin Xu's three poems, excerpted from her debut poetry chapbook, THERE IS STILL SINGING IN THE AFTERLIFE.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

“The earth you give me / Is the wave moving out to sea / Moving further and further on / To distant lands unknown” Watch how rivers and shadows paint a world harshly anew in Krikor Beledian’s "Mantra 5," translated by Christopher Millis and Taline Voskeritchian. https://www.thecommononline.org/m…

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

"The report says he threw / a basketball, knocked over / a computer, and ran off / the school premises." Listen to the author's new recording of "In Montgomery County," Thea Matthews' blistering poem recently published in our 28th Issue, at the link below! https://www.thecommononline.org/in-montg…

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

"You hate everything about who you were and how you came to be and how you watched everyone around you have everything they ever wanted while you ate stale cheese and white bread or Top Ramen." Read @rattysnake.bsky.social's "Dispatch from Camelback Mountain." https://www.thecommononline.org/disp…

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Don't miss reading Komal Dhruv's fiction piece, "Postscript." Inspired by Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, one of the most beloved Bollywood movies of all time, Dhruv's debut piece captures the image of longing and romance between lovers.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

"Someone makes Dante laugh. I kiss the lip of my cup, inhale, and it’s raining Pine-Sol in my head." Read Dan Heck's "Gently," a tender reflection of queer desire and longing set in 2007 in a Virginia Beach hot tub.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Congratulations to Contributor Bob Johnson in publishing his debut story collection, The Continental Divide! In these fourteen stories, explore the violence and vice simmering along the St. Lawrence Divide in southern Indiana. Don't miss out tomorrow, February 11! bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Three American poets chat about finding roots in Ireland in this new interview featuring @sean-carlson.bsky.social , @erinfornoff.bsky.social , @gphibbett.bsky.social

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

"We thought our need was for the wild summer blackberries. But we were foraging for another memory to sustain us through the evil days to come." Zack Strait's Issue 28 poem "Roadside Blackberries" is a beautiful piece with an ominous undertone.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

ICYMI: Check out our newest podcast and dive deeper into Julia Sanches' Issue 28 translation of "The Advice," an absurdist story by Catalan writer Irene Pujadas.

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

The Common is pleased to announce its ninth award from the National Endowment for the Arts! The award approved for 2025 will support The Common in promoting global writing, exposing American audiences to international voices, and elevating the work of debut and emerging authors. Thank you!

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

"interrupting the sun, / we came / this far / for me to become a rupture— " In "Mantra 5" by Krikor Beledian, translated by Christopher Millis and Taline Voskeritchian, images and sounds bleed into each other, levelling land and creating it. Click below to read! https://www.thecommononline.org/ma…

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

"I came back to Arizona during a coast-is-clear moment in her procedures and now I daydream about being here again." Read @rattysnake.bsky.social "Dispatch from Camelback Mountain," full of comfort food and Arizona memories!

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

A pencil factory, a 19th-century train car, and a city oppressed by a never-ending winter. In their TC Online review, Literary Editorial Fellow Sam Spratford discusses the surreal worlds of PROPER IMPOSTERS, a new novella collection out from Panhandler Books. https://www.thecommononline.org/a-tyr…

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

"as in falling, from lofts, trees, our fathers’ / good graces; as in our human nature, / sinful with denim;" Read Issue 28 poem "Dominus" by Angie Macri:

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

"On their first anniversary, Raj gives Simran a basil plant. It grows with almost embarrassing zeal, spilling out of its container if she doesn’t use the leaves quickly enough." Inspired by Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Komal Dhruv's debut piece, "Postscript," captures longing and romance.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

ICYMI: Listen to Angie Macri read her Issue 28 poem "Dominus", a compact piece full of imagery that lingers long past the final line.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

"How wonderful, how the earth offers such goodness to us without cost. And how awful." Read more from Zack Strait's Issue 28 poem "Roadside Blackberries."

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

"There are no paths on the asphalt. Only / a longing for wings." Dive into Maria Josep Escrivà's luscious poetry in our Issue 28 selection of her work.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

In a new podcast, powerhouse translator Julia Sanches sits down with Managing Editor Emily Everett to discuss her recent translation of "The Advice" from the Catalan, and the challenges of preserving tone and style across languages. https://www.thecommononline.org/podcast-julia-sanches-on-the-advi…

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

What do you do when you don't want to cook dinner but you still "Gotta Eat"? Discover the cookbook that gives you some answers—and two other bite-sized book recs—in the January "What We're Reading" column! https://www.thecommononline.org/what-were-reading-january-2025/ @aftongray.bsky.social

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

"Who are you, tell us, who do not remember you / from earth or from heaven? // Your shadow—tell us—is from what space? / What light, say it, has reached / into our realm?" John Murillo translates Spanish poet Rafael Alberti in our second January poetry feature. https://thecommononline.org/januar…

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

"Danger, as in strangers, men or women; / as in twisters at night when you couldn’t / see them coming" Don't miss Angie Macri's forceful and resounding Issue 28 poem "Dominus."

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

"When your own mind harbors an imposter inside itself, how do you go on living?" Literary Editorial Fellow Sam Spratford reviews PROPER IMPOSTERS, a collection of four surreal novellas out today from Panhandler Books.

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Listen to the powerful imagery of Angie Macri's Issue 28 poem "Dominus" come to life in the poet's new recording of her piece!

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Enjoy Maria Josep Escrivà's contemplations on temporality and nature in our Issue 28 sample of her poetry.

submitted 31 days ago • 1 comment

Don't know where to start with your 2025 reading goals? Check out "What We're Reading" in the January edition of the column for three bite-sized book recs by @aftongray.bsky.social , Hema Padhu, and Adrienne Su!

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

Get a glimpse into THE OLD CURRENT, Brad Leithauser's first new poetry collection in over a decade, with this sample of three poems in our January poetry feature.

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Need help with accountability? Look no further! TC's Weekly Writes program is here to help you. The program costs just $25 for 10 weeks (that’s only $2.50 per week!).

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

"From beyond the waves, looking back at the shore, civilization betrays itself." Explore the mysteries of a fiery mountainside in @christytending.bsky.social 's lyrical new Dispatch from Japan.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

Weekly Writes Vol. 9 kicks off on January 27, just in time to help you stay accountable for your New Year’s resolutions and 2025 goals! Sign-ups close up this Sunday.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

Time is running out! Don't forget to sign up for TC's Weekly Writes program. Starting on Monday, you will have access to a ten-week program designed to help YOU stick to your writing goals. Learn more information here: https://thecommononline.org/weekly-writes-volume-9-accountable-you/

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

"I’m part of a generation of writers who come from immigrant families and [...] write about the many faces of Germany today." Don't miss the interview between Khuê Phạm and Jonas Rosenbrück!

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments