Jennifer Acker's Blog, page 4
June 27, 2025
Podcast: Pria Anand on “The Elephant’s Child”
PRIA ANAND
speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “The Elephant’s Child,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue.
speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “The Elephant’s Child,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue.
June 26, 2025
June 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems from Pedro Poitevin, Aiden Heung, and Ellie Black
June 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems from Pedro Poitevin, Aiden Heung, and Ellie Black
This month we’re pleased to bring you poems by PEDRO POITEVIN translated from Spanish by PHILIP NIKOLAYEV and new work by 2025 Disquiet Prize finalists AIDEN HEUNG and ELLIE BLACK.
This month we’re pleased to bring you poems by PEDRO POITEVIN translated from Spanish by PHILIP NIKOLAYEV and new work by 2025 Disquiet Prize finalists AIDEN HEUNG and ELLIE BLACK.
June 24, 2025
NYC Anniversary Party: Celebrating 15 Years of The Common
On June 12, contributors, readers, and friends of The Common gathered in New York to celebrate the magazine’s 15th anniversary. The vibrant reception was a testament to The Common’s decade-and-a-half growth into a global literary community. Scroll on for a gallery of selected images from the event! Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Acker and editorial board member Ted
June 23, 2025
Review: The South by Tash Aw
Review by BRITTA STROMEYER
The novel, both broad in its scope and delicate in its intimacy, explores the repercussions when personal lives intersect with wider societal currents. It unfolds with a quiet yet remarkable sense of pacing, each moment carefully weighted, drawing the reader deeper into the rich inner lives of its characters.
The novel, both broad in its scope and delicate in its intimacy, explores the repercussions when personal lives intersect with wider societal currents. It unfolds with a quiet yet remarkable sense of pacing, each moment carefully weighted, drawing the reader deeper into the rich inner lives of its characters.
June 20, 2025
What We’re Reading: June 2025
MARIAH RIGG
As someone who often writes environmentally-focused fiction, I’m always looking for work that recognizes the hopelessness I feel concerning the future of the Earth while also focusing on how (and why) the hell we keep going as our world barrels toward collapse.
As someone who often writes environmentally-focused fiction, I’m always looking for work that recognizes the hopelessness I feel concerning the future of the Earth while also focusing on how (and why) the hell we keep going as our world barrels toward collapse.
June 17, 2025
Farewell to Pictou County, N.S.
On the night a deer ran into the side of our car, the glass exploded like confetti. I don’t remember crying, I remember it all like that magnificent snow globe, the details lost on me beyond the glittering shards swirling around like snowflakes. I remember being confused later on, when my sister kept insisting that I was crying in the passenger seat until the ambulance came. One of us remembers it wrong.
June 16, 2025
Celebrating Intimacy of Self: Mauricio Ruiz interviews Melissa Febos
MELISSA FEBOS
I had done so much work in that year to change my thinking and myself and my ideals and my relationship to love, but I couldn't really grow much further without actually practicing it with a person. It's like reading and thinking about dancing in a new way, but you can't get good at it until you actually start dancing.
I had done so much work in that year to change my thinking and myself and my ideals and my relationship to love, but I couldn't really grow much further without actually practicing it with a person. It's like reading and thinking about dancing in a new way, but you can't get good at it until you actually start dancing.
June 12, 2025
Reconsidering My Weirdo Hero
TED CONOVER
It seemed to me the most mysterious, imaginative thing I had ever come across. The narrator, in language as simple as the poem I had read, describes life in a small community where people live in wooden shacks and gather together for meals. There are statues of vegetables and the sun shines a different color every day.
It seemed to me the most mysterious, imaginative thing I had ever come across. The narrator, in language as simple as the poem I had read, describes life in a small community where people live in wooden shacks and gather together for meals. There are statues of vegetables and the sun shines a different color every day.
June 5, 2025
Two Poems by Hendri Yulius Wijaya
HENDRI YULIUS WIJAYA
time and again his math teacher grounded him in the courtyard to lower / the level of his sissyness.
time and again his math teacher grounded him in the courtyard to lower / the level of his sissyness.
June 4, 2025
Dispatch: Two Poems
SHANLEY POOLE
I’m asking for a new geography, / something beyond the spiritual. // Tell me again, about that first / drive up Appalachian slopes // how you knew on sight these hills / could be home. I want // this effervescent temporary, here / with the bob-tailed cat // and a hundred hornet nests.
I’m asking for a new geography, / something beyond the spiritual. // Tell me again, about that first / drive up Appalachian slopes // how you knew on sight these hills / could be home. I want // this effervescent temporary, here / with the bob-tailed cat // and a hundred hornet nests.
