Amherst’s literary magazine can add another award to its growing list of accolades. The Common is one of nearly 40 nonprofit organizations to receive a 2017 Amazon Literary Partnership grant. The $8,000 award will support the magazine’s work in publishing and promoting diverse writers from around the world.
“We were awarded the funds because of our investment in editing and promoting writers, and in recognition of our past work and future plans publishing global writers,” says Jennifer Acker ’00, The Common’s editor-in-chief. “The grant will allow us to pay future writers and editors and also cover writers’ costs to travel to events, which we haven’t been able to do before.”
Since its debut in 2011, The Common has published more than 600 authors from 40 countries, including the 26 writers from 15 Middle Eastern countries featured in Issue No. 12, a groundbreaking collection of contemporary Arabic stories in translation. The most recent issue, No. 13, reflects a wide variety of cultural and literary influences and showcases authors and poets from around the world who, Acker says, “render politically and culturally sensitive, fraught and dramatic histories with wit, humor and gorgeous execution.”