"I’ve been drafting a book / about trauma, how words may form / a likeness of the mind that’s torn— / the past tears easily as paper, I write"
Don't miss the new poems from Carson Wolfe, Benjamin Paloff, and Jehanne Dubrow in our April Poetry Feature! Give them a read using the link below!
We’re thrilled to announce that “Inês” and “The Hare,” two stories published online in The Common last year, have been selected as winners of the 2026 O. Henry Short Story Prize. Congratulations to João Pedro Vala, Ismael Ramos, and Jacob Rogers on this honor! Find the full stories online now.
"Another morning in New Harbor arrives, this time with sun in place of cloud and fog. The waves, still audible, seem almost louder than yesterday."
Read more from John T. Howard's dispatch "The Constancy of Ocean Sounds," online now.
"Fiction is my instinctive tool for thinking about the world."
Nigerian writer David Emeka talks craft, consciousness, queer interiority, and writing a gay Nigerian Dubliners — in conversation with Chukwuebuka Ibeh (Blessings, Viking 2024).
New at The Common 🔗
"Sickness has sallowed his skin and bruised the pouches around his eyes. His pale blue summer pajamas hang from his shrunken frame, and uncombed hair turbines around his head in a wild white corona. Yet my father sits up straight."
Read more from Aimee Liu's essay "The Lost Box."
"don’t the leaves on the ground / resemble ripped poems, as if the weather / keeps trying to find the right phrase, / all those crumpled revisions of the seasons"
April is Poetry Month! To celebrate, we have new poems from Carson Wolfe, Benjamin Paloff, and Jehanne Dubrow. Check them out below!
"Between the two towns, a snowdrift / like a sea gone astray, and a mountain"
Erica Ehrenberg's latest dispatch quietly and carefully remembers wintertime and childhood in New York City. Check it out below!
"The Lost Box" narrates the story of Aimee Liu's father's death and her hunt for a box worth millions.
"I want to believe that, by launching me on this hunt, Dad at long last was inviting me in. For the treasure I’m seeking is not money but the black box of my father’s true self."
"is a cloud a cloud or is it / that smoky billow here now gone"
Don't miss Peter Filkins's new poem, "the decorations," which lushly recounts Claude Monet's final years painting at his home in Giverny. Read it at the link below!
I’m just trying, wretch that I am, to put my life together. / Now, had the ruling gods bothered, they could have / made a fourth, who was good. / I’d have followed him, with pleasure.
Read Cavafy's "They Could Have," translated from the Greek by Constantine Contogenis below.
"Both of us dangled / like clothes on the line / strung between buildings / in the steel-tinted colors / of 1978"
"The Receivers" and "The Double," two new poems from the wonderful Erica Ehrenberg, make up an atmospheric dispatch about the lives of children in New York City. Check it out below!
"what we see is what was seen / water suffused the depth of sky"
Peter Filkins's stunning new poem, "the decorations," details the creation of Claude Monet's masterpieces as he is haunted by the deaths of loved ones, World War I, and his growing age. Check it out below!
Join us this Friday, March 27, at 7 p.m. at Amherst Books, where you will be able to hear John Hennessy, poetry editor of The Common, and Philip Metres read some of their new work!
The water level is high this year. / I meet a woman who walked the perimeter / two years ago. Now her granddaughter / scoops tadpoles into a cup. Fat and / ready to transform. Among homelands and // headwaters, I mourn the lost too early, / await the loss to come.
Read it below:
buff.ly/ohd9Vj1
"Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven… If I believe in something, I will do it."
Bringing acclaimed poets, writers, and politicians to Amherst College, our 11th annual LitFest was a campus sensation. Read our full recap of the event, ft. Jamaica Kincaid, Pete Buttigieg:
Oops, looks like that original link isn't working! Sorry about that. You can learn more about the program here: www.thecommononline.org/the-common-y...
The time has come to apply for this summer’s Young Writers Program! If you know or are a high school student (rising 9-12 this fall) excited about creative writing, note that The Common is offering a two-week, fully virtual intensive on the craft of fiction.
Learn more here: buff.ly/kyKj9xx
"If I slowed the car, I might relax into / grief. But I am lost."
Heather Bourbeau's poetic dispatches from the Cascades of California and Washington catalogues the curious kinships we find in wilderness.
Read the full piece below!
"You need to give people a chance to help you and believe in you"
Don't miss our latest interview with Rosanna Young Oh and Allison Pitinii Davis, where they discuss Davis' new novella, Business, and how it relates to her experiences growing up in Youngstown, Ohio. Check it out below!
"We bite into the cake. I taste the house in it, the workings of a stranger’s hands. I taste the dirt covering everything, the metallic water, the towering blue sky."
Cigan Valentine writes from Cajon del Maipo, Chile, in "Dutch Blitz," a new dispatch for TC. Read more below!
"For me, to be from a place is to be in tune with its pressures and precisions"
Check out Rosanna Young Oh's interview with Allison Pitinii Davis, where the two discuss Davis' new novella, working for family businesses, and the Rust Belt in literature. Read it using the link below!
"It is easiest to remember then after / In the summer / maybe the 60 foot wood will make for great shade again / and we will begin the forgetting."
Read more from Shane Moran's poem "Cedar of Lebanon," which appears in February's poetry feature alongside poems from Fatimah Asghar.
"I try another mantra, thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou, but I know it isn’t sufficient, and I know that she doesn’t need my thanks. She needs my well-being."
Read Cory Beizer's "Smith," Issue 30 story and winner of the 2026 PEN/Dau Short Story Prize, online now: buff.ly/0LylReD
"It is Easter weekend in a Catholic majority country. It’s Friday, and it feels like the whole world is counting down and holding its breath, waiting for a miracle they know will always come."
Read more from Cigan Valentine's dispatch "Dutch Blitz," online now.
"[Hadas] invokes flawlessly the everyday details of life in an old and treasured summer place, and brings her readers, too, closer to home."
Read more from Reeve Lindbergh's review of Rachel Hada's new book Pastorals, online now!
"I could not isolate parts of things then (though I can and do now), but whenever I saw this bowl of trembling yellow substance before me I would grow still and silent, I did not cry, that did not make me cry."
Read LitFest 2026 author Jamaica Kincaid's "Biography of a Dress"!
buff.ly/00r3drZ
Birds, Bernie Sanders, and the Bosporus are all themes covered in nonfiction books from our 2026 LitFest alumni authors. Read more from Dan Chiasson, Helen Whybrow, and Aatish Taseer below.
"i cursed the frog / that found its way into / my house. murderous, i laid / poison for the ants. i threw / my moon in the trash."
In February's poetry feature, we welcome new poems from Fatimah Asghar (excerpted above) and Shane Moran.
Congratulations are in order for Cory Beizer and his short story “Smith,” winner of the 2026 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize! Beizer’s debut story was originally published in Issue 30 of The Common, and is available online now for you all to enjoy.
Read the full piece: buff.ly/0LylReD
