Loading summary
Transcript55 lines
- [00:00]
Marshall Poe
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the New Books Network, and if you're listening to the New Books Network, I imagine you like to read and I'm wondering if you have a goal to read more this year. How about a goal to read more of what you love and less of what you don't? The Proofread Podcast is here to help. Hosted by Casey and Tyler, two English professors and avid readers with busy lives, Proofread helps you decide what books are worth spending your precious time on and what books aren't. They feature 15 minute episodes that give you everything you need to know about a book to decide if you should read it or skip it. You'll get a brief synopsis, fun and witty commentary, no spoilers, and no sponsored reviews. It's just what Casey and Tyler think. Life's too short to read a bad book. So subscribe to the Proofread Podcast today. And by the way, there's a new season coming. Thanks very much.
- [00:52]
Marshall's Advertiser
Marshall's buyers are hustling hard to get amazing new gifts into stores right up to the last minute. Like a designer perfume for that friend who never RSVP'd wishlist topping toys for her kids who came too. Belgian chocolates for the neighbor, A cozy scarf for your boss and a wool jacket for your husband that you definitely did not almost forget. Marshalls. We get the deals, you give the good stuff, even at the last minute.
- [01:18]
Marshall Poe
Phew.
- [01:19]
Marshall's Advertiser
Find a Marshall's near you.
- [01:22]
Indeed Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by indeed. You're ready to move your business forward, but first you need to find the right team. Start your search with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It can help you reach qualified candidates fast, ensuring your listing is the first one they see. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs are 90% more likely to report a hire than non sponsored jobs. See the results for yourself. Get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply.
- [01:52]
Marshall Poe
Welcome to the New Books.
- [01:57]
Emily Everett
Hello, everyone. Welcome to this is the Place, a podcast series from the Common magazine on the New Books Network. The Common publishes literature and art with a modern sense of place. I'm Emily Everett, managing editor of the magazine and host of the channel. We've never done this before, but today we're mixing things up and talking to the Commons founder and Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker. She has a short essay in our new fall issue reflecting on the magazine's 15th anniversary. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about the behind the scenes of the Common and what it takes to sustain a magazine for 15 years, and also to sustain a writing life at the same time. Jennifer Acker is the author of the debut novel the Limits of the a fiction honoree for the Massachusetts Book Award. Her memoir, Fatigue, is an Amazon bestseller, and her short stories, essays, translations, and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Oprah Daily, the Washington post, Literary Hub, N1, and the Yale Review, among other places. Acker has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is founder and editor in chief of the Common at Amherst College. She directs the Literary Publishing Internship and Litfest. Her second novel, Surrender, will be released in April 2026. Jennifer Acker, thanks for joining us.
- [03:12]
Jennifer Acker
Hi Emily, So fun to be here.
- [03:15]
Emily Everett
I know I'm being so formal. Like we don't usually talk every day. Would you set the scene for our conversation, sort of describe to us where you're calling from?
- [03:24]
Jennifer Acker
Absolutely. This is my favorite part of the podcast when I listen to it. I always like to hear about people's writing spaces. So today I am Portland, Maine, where I live part time. We have a place that's sort of right on the main drag on Congress Street. So I'm actually just looking out at a winter scene of very slick brick sidewalk, a bare trees, a couple of houses right in front of me. And probably in a little bit the school children will start to come home and I get to watch them walk along the sidewalk with your parents, which is always a delight.
- [04:01]
Emily Everett
Oh, that's adorable. I would love to start off with a reading from your essay. Would you read the first few paragraphs for us?
- [04:07]
Jennifer Acker
Definitely. My horse was called Emmie, short for Emerald Star. Dad's more mature larger mount was named Thassifras, which he shortened to Sassy. If we hadn't taken these Girl Comb, they'd have been shipped to the glue factory. A pony may be the birthday wish of many young girls, and I was no exception. But in our case, owning horses was also the long deferred dream of my father, a West Coaster who'd transplanted himself to Maine from Los Angeles to escape drastic population growth and live closer to the land. In an echo of his childhood on a Colorado dirt farm, dad had yearned for years to go trail riding around our property. By the time I was 13, we finally had a barn designed by dad to store hay and shelter animals, and I was old enough to share in the horses caretaking. It was the perfect moment to begin our joint adventure. But one thing held us back. Emmy and Sassy were standard bred, retired from the harness racing track. This meant on the one hand that they were affordable. We paid for them by the pound. What we didn't know was that Ne and Sassy moved with an odd gait. In Armis racing, there is no jockey. Instead the horse pulls a two wheeled cart called the Filky which is steered by a driver. Standard red harness racers are trained to pay a mode and speed somewhere between a trot and a canter. Our job, we soon discovered, was to break the horses of their pacing so that they could be properly ridden. Retraining Emmy became the promise and bane of my weekends. Every Saturday I'd head to the barn and instead of saddling her up for a free flowing ride with the wind in my ponytail, I'd get out the whip and the lead and run Emmy in circles, correcting her whenever she fell into pacing rather than trotting. I quickly grew bored.
- [05:57]
Emily Everett
Thank you for reading that. I wonder, for our listeners who may not have read this piece yet, would you just describe what it's about generally?
- [06:04]
Jennifer Acker
Yeah, it was interesting when I was thinking about writing an introduction to this issue, the 30th issue of the Commons, celebrating our 15th anniversary, I wasn't thinking of any sort of particularly literary things. I was mostly thinking about why place is important to me. I think, I think that part of where I started and I had these images of my dad and I training these horses and about sort of being out in the back field and that this is something that my dad and I had done together and how, how lovely it was to have that space together and to have this, this, you know, these fields and this barn and the house and the, you know, and the forest that really felt like mine because I was the only kid growing up there. I have two half siblings. But I grew up, you know, on the farm by myself as a kid. And so, and so then I was thinking more about my dad and how he cultivated this place like the place that I grew up in, which really his domain. You know, he cultivated the apple orchard, he grew the vegetables. And I helped, you know, to the extent that an 8 year old can help or that a, a lazy teenager can help. But I think what I, what I realized was that was just how, how much hard work that was like it always seemed so effortless, effortless to me as a, as a kid in the way that anything that your parents or adults do when you're a kid seems easy. And as an adult I sort of had this revelation that my dad really worked at these things and that not everything that he did came out well the first time so he would always have some like mechanical engineering project that he was working on, restoring something and it would break and then he would go to the hardware store and he'd come back and you didn't have the right part and he has to go back and talk to them again. And so I think it then necessary became looking into effort. And I thought, well, that's really something I can relate to, you know, having put all of this effort into sort of cultivating a magazine. And that's where the parallel of sort of riding the horses and working at that and looking at what my dad did and then realizing that, you know, I didn't know what I was doing when I started the Commons. And so I made a lot of mistakes and just tried to learn from them and keep going.
- [08:37]
Emily Everett
Yeah, it's great. It's a very, it's a really nice allegory. I think I remember you being a bit daunted to kind of sit down and write something that was supposed to sum up 15 years of work. And I feel like you did it quite obliquely and that was probably the right call. We've been doing a lot this year to celebrate the Commons 15th anniversary. We did special events and parties, we made videos, we made some fun new swag with new artwork representing our covers. But I think the part I enjoyed the most has been having just like a reason and kind of like forcing the space to look back, to sort of take a pause and look back at things. It's not something we get a chance to do very often, to sort of look back on our work on that sort of big picture, grand scale, because, you know, we're busy preparing the next issue or you're balancing the budget or whatever. So I wonder if there's something you've been especially reflecting on this year or something you're most proud of.
- [09:28]
Jennifer Acker
Yeah, such a nice question. I. I think that, you know, as you say, we get so tied up in the day to day details. And then one thing that this year really forced me to realize in a very happy revelation was that magazine is all about people, that we talk about the work, we talk about the short stories that we loved, and, you know, we have editorial discussions with the interns and we are each engaged in our own editing projects with the authors. But really, I think what was memorable to me about the year is that we would have these events where we would gather some of our past contributors together and have, you know, talk about their work. And I can, I could really see their trajectory of their careers from publishing in the magazine to publishing several books and. Or to winning awards and to. Or getting an agent or, you know, or making some crucial discovery in their career and changing directions or. And so with sort of that combined with looking at the history of the internship program, and we've been mentoring students for 15 years now. So we have all these wonderful young people who are now still young, but not as young as they were when we first met them out in the world, doing cool things, publishing their own books. And so just thinking about that, and then, of course, you know, thinking about how lucky I feel to be working in this collaborative environment with you and the other section editors that we have and the other people that we get to work on at the magazine. And so it really. What is a point of pride that the magazine has touched so many lives, and I feel really privileged to have sort of been a part of various, you know, career trajectories. But many of those authors are now friends, and that's sort of how it, you know, how it goes in the. In the literary world. The relationships become really important because you're working on art together, and art is so intimate and so much a sharing of yourself that I really feel close to a lot of people. Even if maybe I haven't talked to them in years, I can remember working on them on a particular piece and how, like, sort of joyous and thought provoking and stimulating that was.
- [11:55]
Emily Everett
Yeah. I sort of marvel at how many. What I feel like are really close writing friendships I have now that have come from editing someone's work in the magazine or having them on the podcast. And then I run into them at an event, and all of a sudden it's like, every time I'm in the city, I'm gonna see that person, you know, I know you have people like that as well. It is really magical. I think the other great thing is that, you know, if you have writing friends, you get to celebrate their wins. You know, like you mentioned, their awards, their books getting published, that kind of thing. As a literary magazine, we. So many literary friends, and we get to celebrate all of their big wins and just watch them. Yeah, yeah. Watching them go on and, you know, if, if, if they win a big award, you know, it feels like, you know, it feels like something we can share in a little bit. Yeah. I wonder if you had to put a shape to the Commons 15 years. How would you kind of summarize it? I'm thinking about how much things have changed over the years, and I wonder if, like, your vision has changed for the magazine. Over the years or sort of the scope you feel like it's sort of covering.
- [12:51]
Jennifer Acker
I mean I always feel a little bit under ambitious or something when somebody asked me that question about whether is my vision now different than it was before? And I don't really think it is terribly different. In the beginning I wanted to publish great place based writing. I wanted to create a literary community. And those things are still the things that I want to do. And so that part hasn't really changed. Certainly it feels different to be running the magazine now than it did in year two. And I was like, what the hell am I doing? And also we were really in startup mode for a long time. And that sort of startup mode is like from the outside. Yeah, we were publishing and we were publishing on a regular schedule. But as we know it's very different behind the scenes. And so just figuring out like, okay, are we going to get the grant application in on time and are we going to manage to have another launch party and you know, where the next portfolio going to come from and. But just sort of all the, all the back end things that go into, you know, into producing something editorial. It really felt quite frenetic in the early years. Like, you know, just like we're just spreading water and so now I don't feel like that every day anymore. And that is great. I feel like that is like a major win to sort of be at an operation that, that, that feels secure. We have this wonderful partner with Amherst College. You know, you and I have been working together for almost 10 years. You know, we have things that are very established in a certain way. Which is not to say that we're not always trying new things, you know, of course we are and we are trying to reach new audiences and we're trying to, you know, all. We've gathered the best writers we can find and all of that takes energy and effort. But it's a different kind of, different kind of thing than just like the work of, of sustaining something. Yeah. Of course every, you know, we have been, you know, we. The magazine started post 2008 after that, you know, after that crash and like now we're in another unstable moment and that. And we in along the way we passed through Covid. So the world is still affecting us and we're still figuring out how to respond to a changing arts landscape and a changing funding landscape. But overall things do feel more solid and sustainable and. And I do really believe we are going to be around for the next 15 years.
- [15:30]
Emily Everett
I hope so. Yeah. I mean it must have been the first couple years of the magazine, you were the only full time staff member and the entire other staff was just student interns. Is that right?
- [15:40]
Jennifer Acker
Right. I mean, we had sort of section editors who were soliciting work. And of course, Gabrielle, our designer, um, she'd been around from the beginning designing our beautiful issues. Um, but yeah, yeah, it really was kind of a one woman show. It's not that I didn't have, you know, groups of support who would provide ideas, but in terms of the execution of things and sort of, you know, getting stuff done. Yeah, that. That was really just me.
- [16:09]
Emily Everett
So obviously we do these portfolios often in the. In the print magazine, you know, from a certain part of the world or a certain diaspora or a certain experience. And I wonder if you have a favorite portfolio. I. It's like choosing one of your children.
- [16:22]
Jennifer Acker
But it is really hard. Each of them is special for a different reason. I think that there are few that are really special. And then I'll say something, something more in a third area. But the. The one kind that we. That the common sort of responded to a moment was with the Puerto Rico portfolio because. And we did that sort of post Hurricane Maria. And that was sort of just driven out of a. Out of curiosity and concern and feeling of warmth for the Puerto Rican community. But that felt great because the work was so good. On the one hand, I felt like it was. There's just so little Puerto Rican literature that is being translated to US Mainland audiences. And given this close connection that the US And Puerto Rico have, that felt like an important moment to be able to share those voices. And also because it came at such a devastating time for that community. It felt like one little thing that we could do to shine the light on the people who are the writers and the artists who were really continually valiantly and doing their work during that difficult time. So that one felt special. The other one that I think about is the Gulf portfolio, the Arabian Gulf portfolio, which threw together all of these different, more transient communities that are such a part of the Arabian Gulf and those countries. And that felt personal because I had spent time in Abu Dhabi. But also just the response, the author's response to that portfolio where they felt like someone is recognizing our lives. This is a portfolio in which we get to share experiences with other people who are like us, but we are not recognized as any kind of, you know, named community because there are so many. There are so many differences. There are, you know, you know, people. People of Arabic heritage and, you know, from people of Indian heritage. And you know, so many different communities and expats and migrants in the, in the area. So I, I felt like that was also kind of, you know, a beautiful thing that we were able to do and you know, wasn't our idea, of course, nor Naga came to us with the idea of that, of that portfolio. And so that felt really worthwhile as well. And then the third thing is just which is more now at an institution is our Arabic portfolios. And something that I think Arabic literature gets up short shrift in the US we're at another terrible moment of Islamophobia. And so it's just, it feels like continuing that work also feels important. And working with our Arabic fiction editor, Hoshar, who I've been working with for also more than 10 years now, is just sort of part of something that we do. Like we are a home for Arabic literature and I think that's very common in the literary landscape.
- [20:02]
Marshall Poe
And Doug, here we have the Limu Imu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance. Save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [20:17]
Jennifer Acker
Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [20:20]
Marshall Poe
Cut the camera. They see us.
- [20:22]
Ryan Reynolds
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Fairy underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates, excludes Massachusetts.
- [20:30]
VRBO Advertiser
VRBO makes it easy to claim your dream summer spot with early booking deals from homes with pools to poolside loungers. When you book a vrbo, you don't have to reserve any loungers. They're all yours. Get that early Booking deal@vrbo.com this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move Being financially savvy Smart move. Another smart move. Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighbor, State Farm is there prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [21:15]
Emily Everett
Hmm. Yeah, I'm glad you said that because I always think of the portfolios like that. One of the things the comment can do is to bring attention to work that's, that's not often getting attention in the US but you're totally right that a wonderful side effect is that sometimes we're helping these people create community amongst themselves as well. Like you talk about with the Gulf folks, you know, then came to, came to know each other and came to feel like they had community amongst themselves, too.
- [21:39]
Jennifer Acker
And of course, that was also true with the farm workers portfolio that you edited and with Miguel and bringing that together. I thought, you know, just watching people come together and feel recognized as both farm workers and writers and for both sides of their identities was very powerful to watch.
- [22:02]
Emily Everett
Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. That was really very powerful. The farmworker portfolio did. It was sort of immigrant, migrant, and US Citizen farm workers and people who had grown up in farm worker families writing about their experiences. And every time we had an event related to that, those. The people, the contributors who would come would inevitably end up in tears or hugging or laughing about, you know, the food that their mothers would cook them. Like, there was just so much community amongst them. And I think they had felt very separated and isolated. Like, I know many of them mentioned, you know, Miguel Morales mentioned feeling like he wasn't a real farmworker. Cause he had done a different kind of farm work than other farm workers had. And that they had all been. They all had sort of these bad feelings about experiences they had had. And that coming together sort of helped them, you know, sort of accept their. Yeah, their community was sort of something that was bringing them together. Yeah, it was lovely. This year we had a really fun first to the magazine, which is that a story that you edited and published in the Common came out as a movie. It debuted at Cannes. You even got to go to the premiere in New York City. I wonder if you could just tell us that story in brief.
- [23:13]
Jennifer Acker
Yeah, that was a really exceptional experience. Yeah. So there was a story that came to us from the writer Ben Shattuck, someone who we had published before previously in the magazine. And something wonderful had always come out of the pieces that he published with us. And yeah, when he told me a couple of years after we published that piece that there was a production company interested in making the movie and a director attached, I was floored. Not because it's not a gorgeous story, but because I thought, really, I know that movies get made from short stories, but that someone had seen our little magazine, someone had read it in the magazine and, you know, and gone from there was. I was really exciting. And so, you know, movies take a long time to get made. So Ben would just update me from time to time about how things were going and, you know, whether they had all the funding together or, you know, what were the various hiccups. And it was fun to get a little glimpse into that. And then when these Hughes movie stars were attached to it and Josh o' Connor and Paul Nezko. I thought, you've got to be kidding me. Like, this is incredible. This is going to be such a good movie. And so. And I knew that Ben was writing the screenplay and it was just sort of interesting to hear about. About that process. So it really felt like it was still very much his and. And faithful to the original because he was the one who was, you know, writing the screenplay so that the movie would really feel like the short story. So, yeah. So, you know, time passed, then suddenly there were trailers and we got to really see what it would look like. And then Ben invited me to the premiere in New York and my first movie premiere ever. And I think, what do I wear? Who's gonna be there? Is there going to be a red carpet? Am I going to know anyone? This is not my world. I'm just, you know, I'm just. I'm just showing up to, like, peer in from the outside, like, pressing my nose to the glass. But the actors were tremendously nice and all very literary people really. I mean, like, you could really tell how much they enjoyed reading Ben's script and were very appreciative that this had been a short story in a magazine and wasn't just birthed as a movie, but that had an evolution as a piece of literature. And so that was really quite moving to me to. To see that and to be able to see that, you know, how a story can then go on and have all these lies.
- [25:54]
Emily Everett
Yeah, absolutely. It was so fun to just sort of, you know, it does feel like a very long process and we've been sort of watching from the sidelines the whole time. CHEERING I wonder if there's anything you wish people knew about running a literary magazine. Whether that's writers or industry people or laypeople.
- [26:13]
Jennifer Acker
I think there are cheap things. One is something that industry people know, but I think maybe the average reader doesn't know, but it's. Literary magazines are the launching pads for writers. Most writers would not have careers except for getting their starts in literary magazines. I think it's not very common to just be someone who just has written nothing, published nothing, write the book, you know, write the book, gets an agent, sell it, and then it. And then it goes out into the world from there. And so, you know, we are the, you know, the ground, you know, for the fertile ground for hours to plant their heads and. And then sprout up from there. So that's really important to me as sort of where magazines are in the. In the ecosystem. Like, you know, we're not, you know, super prestigious, you know, sound like everyone knows what the names of various literary magazines, but they are really important in the, in the development of writers. And then the other thing I think that maybe is not so apparent because so many literary magazines are nonprofits, but like we are a business and the magazine has to be run with an eye towards money and where is it going to come from and how are we going to pay people? And it has been imperative to us from the beginning to pay authors. And even though we can't pay them a lot, we do want to recognize their effort financially. But that all of the, you know, the, you know, a magazine is not really going to work, you know, the same way the restaurant is not going to work if you don't have enough capital and if you don't have the right kinds of promotion and if you don't have the right kind of sort of, you know, return on your investment. Like if you don't have customers or, you know, or readers. And so that is something that I always say to when I visit classrooms and people are asking about starting magazines that I don't want people to ever forget about that. And you know, not that I think I have a lot of business savvy, but I think just knowing that, how important that aspect of it is something that helps you keep your head on straight.
- [28:34]
Emily Everett
Yeah, it is like a non profit and yet still a business.
- [28:39]
Jennifer Acker
Exactly. It sounds like an oxymoron, but it's really not. It's really still about like, do you have enough support to do the things that you want to do? And of course we're not making a profit, which makes that, you know, not a business, not to make that a nonprofit, but we, you know, everything we have we are putting back into the organization.
- [29:00]
Emily Everett
So I've been at the common for almost 10 years now. And when I started at the Common, I was just starting to write my first like baby little short stories, just, just figuring out how to write. And you were in the final stages of your first novel. So I feel like since we've been working together, we both had to find sort of a balance with work and with writing. You know, time is always short basically for both. But I also think we found lots of inspiration and community and new writer friends, as you mentioned, from artwork at the magazine. And those things help you with the writing. So I wonder if you could talk about how you think about your writing life these days, whether that's about how you balance it or how you feel like editing people's work at the Magazine influences your own writing or anything like that.
- [29:46]
Jennifer Acker
Yeah, definitely is two sides of the same coring. They're the writing and editing work. And now I would sort of add, you know, I'm starting to do some translation work. So that also feeds into the, you know, the creation, creative writing life. But I have learned so much from working with authors. And whether it's just about their own vision, like how they see their work, I don't like. I've worked with one author several times. He doesn't use commas. And, you know, that seems foreign to me. But that's the way she sees her work. It's just her voice, the voice that comes out in her head, and she respects that. And I have to respect that as an editor. And so just sort of learning the different ways that people see their work, but also the seriousness with which everyone holds their work, which is the right kind of seriousness. I'm not saying it's overly serious, but if you have to hold your work in high esteem so that you actually pay some attention. And so that is always inspiring. And I also have learned a lot about structure because I feel like that's what I primarily edit for, is structure. And, you know, often when you and I talk about pieces, it's about the shape of the story, you know, and, you know, how. Where does it start, how does it build, how does it conclude, what are the elements that are missing? And when I talk to Liz Whittier, who edits a lot of our nonfiction, you know, we sort of talk, talk about similar things. And so I do like having developed that sort of X ray vision that helps you see the structure of picu. That said, I still find narrative structure to be the most difficult part of my own work and sort of getting that right, but at least I have a sense of what it should be right. And so even if I can quite get there by myself, like, I'm an editor who needs an editor. Like, I just think that's, you know, every writer needs an editor. It's. It at least that sort of helped me recognize the patterns and see, okay, like, you know, there. There is. There is a pattern or some kind of narrative structure or some kind to every piece of writing. You know, what should it be in mind? And I have learned that through editing.
- [32:16]
Emily Everett
Yeah, that is the hard part and the crucial part. So your second novel is coming out this sp. What can you tell us about it? What is it about?
- [32:25]
Jennifer Acker
I sometimes say that it is my midlife crisis, queer goat farmer, love story. Love it. So if you unpack all of those pieces. It is about a middle aged woman who grew up on a farm, who left the farm when she went to college and she went to New York City and had a career in higher ed and doing PR for higher ed. She married an academic, he's much older than she is. And then she realizes that she wants to raise goats and make cheese. Like this is like the burning desire of her life. And so, and it happens at a time when her father is ailing and if she doesn't save the farm, it's going to be sold to developers, which should, you know, as you know, having grown up on a farm yourself, that's part of the fear of farmland, is that it's going to become condominium. And so this is the, this is the effort of the book to sort of revive the farm and to do what she loves. But you know, she does, even though she grew up on the farm, she doesn't have a ton of experience in doing, you know, doing what she wants to do. So, you know, farming is incredibly difficult. There are all of these things that she needs to learn how to do. The headwinds are against her. And she ends up, up reconnecting with a friend of hers from high school, a woman that she used to know really well. They fall in love and there's sort of a love triangle dynamic that sort of evolves over, over, over the course of the book. So it's very, very small town, which was one of the things that I really wanted to do with this book was make a portrait of a small town. I grew up in a small town. I live in a small town. I think there's so much life there and that by and larger, you know, it's not that there are no books written about small towns, there are plenty. But I do think that they are sort of overlooked by the publishing industry.
- [34:28]
Emily Everett
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm realizing neither of us have said the title of the book, so what is the book called?
- [34:33]
Jennifer Acker
Surrender.
- [34:35]
Emily Everett
This is why we're not publicists. It's called Surrender. It's coming out in April. Why don't you tell people where they can find you online if they want to keep up with you and your book.
- [34:45]
Jennifer Acker
Instagram is the best place. I wasn't on it for years, but now I'm married. So come find me and say hello.
- [34:52]
Emily Everett
What is your Instagram handle?
- [34:55]
Jennifer Acker
It's Jennacker.
- [34:58]
Emily Everett
And always our last question that we ask everyone, what are you working on now and what's next?
- [35:03]
Jennifer Acker
I have a sort of fun, more sort of vacation read that takes place in Greece. It's a mother daughter trip that takes place entirely when they are on vacation together in Greece. There's food and sex and nice weather and so it should be, it is hopefully going to be a really fun read. But stay tuned.
- [35:36]
Emily Everett
Yeah, it sounds dreamy. Especially after the sort of grinding goat farm like farm work being so much work and so much stress. Take me to Greece. As long as there's still cheese, I'm in.
- [35:48]
Jennifer Acker
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. There's no shortage of delicious things and there's actually a lot of ice cream in this novel.
- [35:56]
Emily Everett
Sounds like it's just for me. Well, Jennifer Acker, thank you so much for joining us. It's been really great to talk with you and just sort of, you know, relive 15 years of the common. And I personally am so grateful to you for founding it and hiring me to work on it.
- [36:11]
Jennifer Acker
And I am so grateful for, to you for being, yeah, the best partner imaginable in this enterprise. So it really has been such a delight. And yeah, we're just gonna keep doing this thing.
- [36:26]
Emily Everett
Yeah. Another 15 years. Listeners, you can read Jen's essays and translations and subscribe to our latest issue@thecommononline.org.
- [36:47]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile, Google's unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [37:08]
Marshall's Advertiser
Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.
- [37:16]
Emily Everett
Com.