The Common #19 (Spring 2020)

Editor: Jennifer Acker A special portfolio of stories from Sudan, essays on brothers and murder trials, fiction about gender roles, bomb shelters, and life inside a correctional facility, and poems by Don Share, John Freeman, Tara Skurtu, and more. About The Common: Finding the extraordinary in the common has long been the mission of literature. Inspired by this mission and the role of the town common, a public gathering place for the display and exchange of ideas, The Common seeks to recapture an old idea. The Common publishes pieces of literature that embody particular times and places both real and imagined; from deserts to teeming ports; from Winnipeg to Beijing; from Earth to the Moon: literature and art powerful enough to reach from there to here. In short, we seek a modern sense of place. In our hectic and sometimes alienating world, themes of place provoke us to reflect on our situations and both comfort and fascinate us. Sense of place is not provincial nor old fashioned. It i