"Islands" / The Common

Check out “Islands” by Casey Walker in The Common’s latest (8,000 words). It’ll hook you from the first paragraph.

It’s two stories in one—insistent memories of a teenage relationship haunting the adult narrator as he negotiates a present-day family drama—and Walker doesn’t delineate when we’re shifting from one narrative to the other. What better way to imply how the past is always hanging there, waiting to wallop us, just a paragraph break away?

As both stories careen towards what feel like inevitably catastrophic conclusions, it’s Walker’s exacting plotting and crisp and inventive phrasing that will keep you grounded. And as if all that isn’t enough, you care about every one of his large cast of characters—seven, all told. That’s a lot of spinning plates in one short story!

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The Common “aims to foster the global exchange of diverse ideas and experiences.” They “seek stories that embody a strong sense of place: pieces in which the setting is crucial to character, narrative, mood, and language.”

The Common will be open for submissions from 3/1 through 6/1, and 9/1 through 12/1 according to their website. Submissions from current subscribers to the magazine are accepted free year-round.

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