Common goals

The Common is a magazine with an editorial team who like ‘Finding the extraordinary in the common’.

It needs literature that embodies particular times and places, real and imagined: from deserts to teeming ports; from Winnipeg to Beijing; from Earth to the Moon’. They want literature and art with ‘a modern sense of place,’ with ‘a global exchange of diverse ideas and experiences’ from all writers, Black, indigenous, people of colour, disabled, LGBTQIA+identifying, immigrant, international, and/or otherwise from communities underrepresented in US literary magazines and journals.’

Submit ‘stories, essays, poems, and dispatches’ with ‘a strong sense of place… where the setting is crucial to character, narrative, mood, and language.’ This does not mean travelling to a foreign country; conventional travelogues are not wanted.

Submissions are open 1 Sep-1 Dec, then again 1 March-1 June. Dispatch submissions are accepted year-round. Read the samples of work online to get a feel for their needs and check out the interview with editor-in-chief Jennifer Acker to understand what is meant by a feeling of place.

Submit 1-5 poems, or one prose piece, no more than 10,000 words, or three flash pieces per submission. Submit one dispatch. Dispatches are notes, news, and impressions from around the world. Both prose and verse accepted, but must be non-fiction. Length: up to 800 words. They are accepted year-round and are published online only.

Submit work online. No reprints, or multiple submissions but simultaneous submissions are reluctantly accepted with the usual proviso.

Response time is ‘eight months, but that varies’. Payment is $200 for prose, $40 per poem and $100 for a Dispatch.

Website: www.thecommononline.org