2021 Columbia Journal Winter Contest – Deadline Extended to December 31, 2021
The Columbia Journal is delighted to announce that the 2021 Winter Contest is now officially open for submissions in art, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation. Our judges this year are Arthur Lewis (art), Danielle Evans (fiction), Pamela Sneed (nonfiction), Harmony Holiday (poetry), and Wangui Wa Goro (translation).
The five first place winners of the Winter Contest will be published in print in Columbia Journal Issue 60 in Spring 2022 and will receive a $400 cash prize. At least two additional finalists will be selected and announced for each genre.
From November 20, 2021 onwards, all entries will be accepted via Submittable for a $15 fee per submission. The deadline to submit is December 15, 2021. Submit your work today via Submittable!
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This year’s Winter Contest is held in conjunction with the production of the sixtieth issue, which is themed
Black Voices Now.
Our milestone issue is anchored by an archival special: a selection of pieces the Journal has published since its founding in 1977 that showcase or are in conversation with the theme Black Voices Now. In the first two decades of the Journal’s history, very few Black writers were published in our magazine. The first of these contributions arrived in Issue 5—and was the poem “Liberator” by Derek Walcott, who was on his way to winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. As editors of a literary magazine, we have the privilege and honor to highlight the works of artists we admire. In rereading the pieces from our archives today, we are forced to imagine which voices might not have made it onto our pages. For our anniversary, we reflect on the Journal’s history, what we did and didn’t do, and what we might learn from our past to be better literary citizens today.
With our archival special as a point of departure, in this issue, we seek to put contemporary voices that are creating art from a place of liminality—of identity, of history, of geography, and beyond—in conversation with our archives. Authors of all backgrounds have been invited to contribute works, and our intent is to create an issue of the Journal that exists as a counterpoint to the blindspots we find in our history.
In “Working with Jacob Lawrence: An Elegy,” (published in Issue 36) Lou Stovall, printmaker, and longtime collaborator of Lawrence, one of the best known African-American painters of the twentieth century and a recipient of the U.S. National Medal of Arts, describes his friend’s inspired artistic process:
“I admired him because he used his art to tell the story of struggle and triumph over adversity… As a man, his life had been the struggle of minority vs. majority, Black v.s. White, rich vs. poor. He was outraged by unfairness. Unfairness made him angry, impassioned his art, and focused his attention.”
Consider Stovall’s closing reflection on their artistic discourse:
“We triumph when we rise above limitations and create a sense of order, a place of well-being, an attitude of possibility, and a desire for accomplishment. Working together, Jacob and I did that.”
We invite you to submit works that expand upon the artistic conversation and place different voices in dialogue.
DATES:
We have two submissions windows:
Early Submissions: November 6–November 19, 2021 (free entries via email)
Regular Submissions: November 20–December 30 15, 2021 (paid entries)
FEES AND WAIVERS:
Early Submissions (Fee Waiver): Entry to the 2021 Winter Contest between October 31, 2021 and November 19, 2021 requires no fee. Submissions will be accepted via email at Columbia.Journal.Fee.Waiver@gmail.com.
Please use the subject line: “2021 Winter Contest Submission – GENRE” (Please include the genre of your submission—art, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or translation.)
Submissions received via email after 11:59 p.m. ET on November 19, 2021 will not be considered.
Regular Submissions: Entry to the 2021 Winter Contest between November 20, 2021 and December 31, 2021 will be accepted via Submittable and requires a $15 entry fee, which helps subsidize our magazine and the entries of those who choose to submit early for the fee waiver.
Paid and unpaid entries are reviewed in the same way and given equal consideration.
COMPLETE GUIDELINES:
The five winning artists will receive $400 and have their work published in Columbia Journal’s 60th issue (May 2022). Some finalists may also be published in the issue or online.
Multiple submissions are welcome, but note that the entry fee applies to each submission.
Fiction and nonfiction submissions must not exceed 5,000 words. Poetry submissions must not exceed 5 pages. Visual art submissions are limited to no more than 10 images and any written description accompanying a submission must not exceed 500 words.
The contest entrant’s name should not appear anywhere on the submitted file. In addition, because we share files electronically, it is the entrant’s responsibility to ensure other identifying notations, including references in the document’s properties and title, are not present.
Contest finalists are blind judged to select prize winners.
Early Submission entries will be accepted via email and before the deadline (November 19th, 2021, 11:59 p.m. ET). All other work must be submitted through Submittable. We will not accept mailed submissions.
All work must be original and previously unpublished in any form.
Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please inform us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
Submissions may not be modified after entry. The Columbia Journal, however, reserves the right to suggest edits to the winning story as well as finalists and semi-finalists they are interested in publishing.
Contest entrants cannot have studied or taught at the Columbia University Writing Program at any time in the past three years.
If you have questions, please email us at publisher.columbia@gmail.com
ABOUT OUR JUDGES:
ART: Arthur Lewis
Arthur Lewis is a Partner and Creative Director of Fine Arts and the UTA Artist Space at leading global talent, entertainment, and sports company, UTA. A patron of the arts and a significant collector of both emerging artists and Contemporary African American Art, Lewis—who is a member of the board of Governors Otis College Art and Design, on the board of Prospect New Orleans, a member of the National Advisory Committee for The New Orleans African American Museum and is a Global Council member at The Studio Museum of Harlem— is a well-known and distinguished figure in the art world. Lewis joined UTA in 2019 and during his tenure the Artist Space has exhibited diverse showcases including collaborative exhibitions such as: partnering with Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Rachel Uffner Gallery for a solo show with Arcmanoro Niles, a solo show for Blitz Bazawule, and most recently, a group exhibition with Galerie Myrtis. He is a tireless advocate for artists and the arts community at large.
FICTION: Danielle Evans
Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her second won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and was a finalist for The Aspen Prize, The Story Prize, The Chautauqua Prize, and The Los Angeles Times Book prize for fiction. She is the 2021 winner of The New Literary Project Oates Prize, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and a 2011 National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies including The Best American Short Stories and New Stories From The South. She teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
NONFICTION: Pamela Sneed
Pamela Sneed is a New York-based poet, writer, performer and visual artist, author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery, KONG and Other Works, Sweet Dreams and two chaplets, Gift by Belladonna and Black Panther. In 2021, She published a chapbook If The Capitol Rioters Had Been Black with F magazine and Motherbox Gallery. She has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Hyperallergic and on the cover of New York Magazine. She has performed at the Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Poetry Project, MCA, The High Line, New Museum, MOMA, Broad Museum and the Toronto Biennale. She appears in Nikki Giovanni’s “The 100 Best African American Poems.” In 2018, she was nominated for two Push Cart Prizes in poetry. She is widely published in journals such as The Brooklyn Rail, Art Forum Magazine, The Paris Review, and Frieze Magazine. She is the author of a poetry and prose manuscript Funeral Diva published by City Lights in Oct 2020 featured in the New York Times and Publishers Weekly. Funeral Diva won the 2021 Lambda Lesbian Poetry Award. She currently has work on view at Leslie Lohman.
POETRY: Harmony Holiday
Harmony Holiday is a writer, dancer, archivist, and the author of five collections of poetry including Hollywood Forever and the forthcoming Maafa (Jan. 2022). She curates an archive of griot poetics and a related performance series at LA’s MOCA and a music and archive venue 2220arts that she runs with several friends, also in Los Angeles. She has received the Motherwell Prize from Fence Books, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a NYFA fellowship, a Schomburg Fellowship, a California Book Award, and a research fellowship from Harvard. She’s currently showing a film commissioned for LA’s 2020-21, and working on a collection of essays and a biography of Abbey Lincoln, in addition to other writing, film, and curatorial projects.
TRANSLATION: Wangui Wa Goro
Professor Wangui wa Goro has enjoyed a multidisciplinary life spent over forty years as a public intellectual and has spoken extensively in many parts of the world. She is a widely acclaimed translator, writer, poet, academic, cultural curator, editor with a great passion for languages, literature and intersectional freedom. She considers herself an ambassador and advocate for human, social, political and cultural rights and enjoys working with young people. Her friends consider her “the quintessential transnational global Pan African, feminist Afropolitan”, which, though she finds hilarious, she relishes. Her recent fictional work has appeared in several anthologies including more recently, the highly acclaimed New Daughters of Africa edited by Margaret Busby. She is well known for her translations of Ngugi’s wa Thiong’o’s earlier work and Veronique Tadjo’s work, As the Crow Flies from French among other translations in and across African literatures including works from French, Italian, Kiswahili and Gikuyu. Other works include: “Heaven and Earth” in A Half a day and other stories (MacMillan) Ayebia Clarke (ed.) and “Deep Sea Fishing” edited by Ama Ata Aidoo (Ayebia) appeared in the award-winning African Love Stories. She is passionate about promoting African Literary translation which she conducts through Africa in Translation (AiT) through SIDENSI.
Updated March 17, 2022
