Doubting the Flare
By Casey Brooks
Somewhere there is a heartbeat on the bus. To sit upright was a seldom ignorable terror, no matter how much has been lost. It makes it bulge out, defiling form and function. Today was different, the earth was, for the first time, in transit with a radiant body. Its light melted away the sticky mold that was a life resigned to semi-consciousness.
Story & Five Poems
By Ivy Char
It was Celia who first called me H. Although we were close, having known each other since kindergarten, I had learned to stray from topics that might turn to points of contention, as was apparently the case with the letter. And besides, there existed the distinct possibility, advanced by the satisfied look on her face, that this was all some sort of friendly challenge. “Why ‘H?’” I wondered, and wondered often.
I Tether Myself to You: A Conversation with Alexandra Tanner
By Yasmin Roshanian
I think of this novel as an existentialist novel. Not in any pretentious, philosophical sense, but in the sense that it is really, really hard to know who you are right now. There’s complete information saturation and bombardment.
Paintings by Maisie Luo
Paintings meditating on the ocean, ecology, and a vision for a better world.
From Thirty Pages
By Avot Yeshurun, translated by Dan Alter
A day will come no-one reads my mother's letters.
A pile I have of them.
Not from a her
No word.
From the Archive: “Throwing Dirt on the Grave of Minimalism” — Roundtable Talk
By Alex Wexelman
Roughly a decade after it became the predominant style in the art world, Minimalism—a pared down writing style influenced by the likes of Ernest Hemingway—became a popular trend in literature
Two Stories
By Maeve Barry
Stefan’s adopted mom told him I got into Showstoppers cause I’d have no problem wearing the skanky outfit. Stefan’s adopted mom told him this to make him feel better because he didn’t get in. He told me. I am eight and three quarters and I don't care.
When It Comes Down to It
By Rachael Greene
Everything you think you might do in a threatening situation melts away. This is it, I thought. Though my mind could not quite accept what it was. My hands raised of their own volition, pointlessly, to shield my more vulnerable parts, and my mouth uttered, like an invocation, the name of the only person who could hear me.
Dear End Times,
By Kerry Kurdziel
The surcharge for being alive
has risen again. The bells won’t stop
weeping. We keep sinking
each other and calling it
tragedy -
2024 Columbia Journal Online Contest – Deadline Extended – March 21, 2024
The Columbia Journal is delighted to announce that the 2024 Online Contest will accept submissions in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation from February 21 through March 20, 2024.
From the Archive: Bruce Jay Friedman’s Story, “Business is Business”
By Alex Wexelman
The short story, like many of Friedman’s, concerns a working-class Jewish family and the intra-family struggles for success and financial freedom in America.
Goldfish in the Palace
By Kaci X. Tavares
It’s been too long since I’ve tried to write my Chinese name 黃曉殿 Húang Xǐaodìan. Muscle memory—barely. In Chinese, your family name comes first, the unit identified before the individual. My family: orphaned sisters who borrow a benefactor’s name. Me: Daybreak over a Palace. I cannot find the palace—
2024 Columbia Journal Online Contest – Deadline – March 6, 2024
The Columbia Journal is delighted to announce that the 2024 Online Contest will accept submissions in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation from February 21 through March 6, 2024.
The Garden of the Five Trees
By Salvador Espiru, translated by Andrew Kaufman and Antonio Cortijo Ocana
After, when it had already
caused me much harm and
I could do almost nothing but smile,
I chose the simplest
words, to tell myself
Do Muslim Women Still Need Saving? : How Lila Abu-Lughod Interprets Today’s Political Reality
By Mariam Syed
For the past few weeks, I’ve interviewed Lila Abu-Lughod to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of her essay and the tenth anniversary of her book Do Muslim Women Need Saving?. We discussed the ongoing and heightened significance of her projects given our new political reality: Muslim women are leading global liberation efforts, the United States has withdrawn from Afghanistan, and most recently, has staunchly supported the Israeli army’s full-scale assault on Gaza. This interview was conducted over email.
Your Everyday Social Experiment
By Mandira Pattnaik
Let’s accept that your infobahn alias is a pariah, and let’s assume that you’ve begun to acknowledge three things: That ghosts haunt your computer, your internet, and everything that exists in a parallel non-physical plane. That ghosts are malleable, can take any form, just like social media profiles and bios. That ghosts aren’t bothered by your rules and/or miscellaneous conventions and laws of the land.
Midvinterblot
By Sergei Linkov
Sometimes, when my mother partook of vodka, she would become convinced that she was the illegitimate daughter of some nobleman. She spoke of his estate on the Neva river, where she recalled herself toddling along poplar-line alleys and hiding alder cones under the Roman columns of the gazebo.
“The question is: are you getting hustled?” A Conversation with Aube Rey Lescure
By Liz von Klemperer
Aube Rey Lescure’s debut River East, River West is a searing social commentary that spans decades and perspectives.
Columbia Journal Issue 61 Available for Purchase
Columbia Journal Issue 61 is available for purchase.