The Common Highlights

Enjoy the following selections from The Common, which highlight both the quality of writing and the breadth of style and subject published by The Common. We publish the best literature with an emphasis on a strong sense of place. Our contributors come from across the world, speaking and writing in numerous languages, each adding their own legacy to the ongoing cultural and literary conversation in our pages.

Selected award winners:

• "The First Last Light in the Sky," Rowan Ricardo Phillips' poem in which something apocalyptic arrives on the horizon, was collected in Best American Poetry.
• "He's-at-Home," an essay by Ben Shattuck excavating a particularly salacious artifact from a Nantucket chimney, was one of LitHub's most-read stories of 2015.
• "The Electric City," a short story by Kashana Cauley about assembly-line workers winning the lottery and buying Detroit, was featured on Longreads' "Best of 2015" list. 
• "Tell Me, Please," Emily Chammah's story of love and friendship (and the awkward in-between) in the social media age, won the PEN America Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. 

Popular with our readers:

• "Decriminalization: A Love Story," Susan Ferreira's account of Portugal's grand experiment in legalizing drugs, is our most popular piece ever, and was reprinted in The Guardian, among others.
• "The Beauty of Boys Is" is a tender poem by Vievee Francis exploring the construction of masculinity and the death of boyhood.
• "Death of the Farm Family" became an integral part of Sarah Smarsh's National Book Award-finalist memoir Heartland; both are about life in the now-infamous white working class, in this case on a farm in Kansas.
• "Voices from Japan," an interview by Hannah Gersen of Roland Kelts, illuminates the world of Japanese literature and publishing. 

Podcasts 

• Click here to listen to The Common contributors discuss their short stories, poems, and essays. 

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