I entered the world a textbook case. My earliest thoughts were, I am a boy. I behaved traditionally male in every way, eschewing girl’s toys, books, games, clothing, monikers. At four, I asked my parents for “sex change surgery.”

Columbia Journal is excited to announce the winners and finalists of our inaugural Black History Month Special Issue, in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art. We want to thank everyone who submitted for creating art and sharing their work with us, and express our congratulations to the winners and finalists. You can click on the title of each piece to read it in full. All winners and runner-ups will be published on Wednesday, February 19th, or shortly thereafter.

At the Columbia Journal, we believe in creating space for and celebrating traditionally underrepresented voices. We seek out and support marginalized writers year-round, but this March marks our first ever Womxn’s History Month special issue. Our website will feature writing and creative expressions from artists reflecting the diversity of non-men, non-binary folx, women, and all those of marginalized genders. We are particularly interested in work related to the intersectionality of gender and other identities, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration, age, sex, sexual and/or romantic orientation, class, and more.

The Columbia Journal is now open for submissions to our annual Spring Contest in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Our badass and wonderful judges include Melissa Febos in nonfiction, Analicia Sotelo in poetry, and Kali Fajardo-Anstine in fiction.

All those local to New York City and nearby: join Columbia Journal staff, faculty advisors, and alums for an evening of spelling fun! Talented writers from the community will go head to head in a battle of wits. As Taylor Swift so famously sings: “Spelling is fun.”

The Columbia Journal is now open for submissions to our annual Spring Contest in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Winners of the Spring Contest will be published online on columbiajournal.org and will receive a cash prize of $250 each. Up to three finalists will also be selected and announced in each genre and published on our website, though there is no cash prize. Submissions open today on Submittable, and the deadline to submit is February 23rd, 2020. There is a $10 entry fee for each submission. More guidelines can be found here.

What do you want people to say at your funeral?
From the comfort of the casket, would you prefer a weeping violin or a cheerful trumpet? And what about the reception—still or champagne? Waterworks or fireworks?

The winter my father’s mother moved out of our home was nothing short of fanged, for where we lived on the Gulf. The roads froze. My father drove us to visit the seniors’ facility after school twice a week, a 10-minute drive away. Her private suite had a little TV deep as it was wide; I could just barely wrap my arms all the way around. While she puttered around her stoveless, ovenless kitchen to fix us styrofoam plates of no-bake cheesecake she’d set in the fridge the night before, we would sit on her sofa and wait for the early-afternoon soap opera programming block to end and the late-afternoon game show programming block to begin.

Recently my colleagues in the English Department made a collective push to compel my getting a cat since, in their generous estimations, cats have shown a remarkable affinity for me and vice versa. It is true cats do appear to gravitate towards my presence in ways my colleagues do not when I visit their homes. I have no rationale for it since I’ve never owned a cat. I also haven’t thought much about acquiring any sort of pet as of late, either, in the midst of finishing my tenure review portfolio this term. In addition, I frequently make any number of the usual excuses for not getting a cat: the expense, the investment of time, the shredding of precious material items, what will happen if the match goes wrong, et cetera. But I don’t admit to them I’m the kind of soft-hearted libertine who enjoys other people’s cats because of my complete lack of responsibility for them, knowing they will return to their owners to commit the rank misdeeds I won’t have to encounter myself. Cuddle benefits, then, with none of the fuss and dander at my place. A solid deal for me, I’d concluded. This self-satisfied mentality of mine likely irritates my colleagues to no end about my resistance more than anything else, among my other notable shortcomings.

In poetry, a body becomes not just a vehicle through which we move about the world, but the lens from which we write that experience. What does it then mean to comment on the world from a body that exists at the intersection of so many systems of violence? How does that violence surround and move through the body? What does one do to try and move away from it, while not moving away from their communities?

In the beginning, there were only two. My brother and I, the only children our father would ever have, a man whose face we never saw. We are War and Discord, here long before such titles existed. Long before their wise carpenter gave them a new God to follow. They came and they went, and we outlived them all.

Water-bearer:
constellation of your birth,
Not a womb, but a jar,

Welcome to Blurbed, a round-up of literary recommendations from the editors and contributors at the Columbia Journal! Each month, Blurbed features a curated list of things to read, events to attend and news from the Journal.

Columbia Journal is excited to announce the winners and finalists of our inaugural 2019 Spring Contest, which was judged by Alexandra Kleeman, Tommy Pico, and Kiese Laymon. We want to thank everyone who entered the Contest for sharing their work with us, as well as our three wonderful judges, and express our congratulations to the winners and finalists. You can click on the title of each piece to read it in full.

Columbia Journal is excited to announce the winners and finalists of our 2018 Winter Contest, which was judged by Jericho Brown, Lauren Wilkinson, and Alexander Chee. We want to thank everyone who entered the Contest for sharing their work with us, as well as our three wonderful judges, and express our congratulations to the winners and finalists.

Welcome to Blurbed, a round-up of literary recommendations from the editors and contributors at the Columbia Journal! Each month, Blurbed features a curated list of things to read, events to attend and news from the Journal.

We’re delighted to announce the new print issue of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. Columbia Journal’s Issue 57 features work by Jenny Holzer, Patti Smith, Jesse Paris Smith, Eileen Myles, Duy Doan, Lili Kobielski, Donika Kelly, and more. Read more about Issue 57 in Editor in Chief Adrian Perez’s Editor’s Note below. Issue 57 was published in May 2019, and you can order a copy now.

Welcome to Blurbed, a round-up of literary recommendations from the editors and contributors at the Columbia Journal! Each month, Blurbed features a curated list of things to read, events to attend and news from the Journal.

While the publishing process contains many vital roles to insure readers discover great books, no other job is quite as immediate as that of a bookseller. The best booksellers are not only dream readers for writers, but they are also interested in developing relationships— to customers, of course, but first and foremost to books themselves. Booksellers put the strange, the exciting, and the revelatory into our hands. Below are the books that beloved indie booksellers from across New York City are looking forward to in 2019.

The editors are delighted to officially announce that the first-ever Columbia Journal Spring Contest is now open for submissions in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Our judges will be Alexandra Kleeman (fiction), Tommy Pico (poetry), and Kiese Laymon (nonfiction). The three winners of the Spring Contest will be published online on columbiajournal.org and will receive a cash prize of $250 each. At least three finalists will be selected and announced in each of the three genres in the spring. Submissions open today on Submittable, and the deadline to submit is February 15. There is a $10 entry fee for each submission. You can read the full contest guidelines and more about this year’s judges below.