Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands makes readers feel willfully uncomfortable, unwillfully human, and potentially insane.
Review: Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be Alright by Ukamaka Olisakwe
Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right, digs out a range of emotions—rage, expectation, admiration, admonition—which keep the reader turning page after page.
Au Revoir, Gopher
I turn and face Bill Murray. You, I say. You leave in the morning. Bill Murray looks at me as if I’m beyond saving.
Spring 2020 Contest: Winners & Runner Ups Announced
Columbia Journal is excited to announce the winners and finalists of our annual Spring Contest, which was judged by Melissa Febos in nonfiction, Analicia Sotelo...
Spring Contest Runner Up in Fiction: Aquanauts of Hudson Canyon
Leo's whole body is now cold and fractured, a calving iceberg. The old man's incontinent and incoherent and not long for this world—this seems more...
Spring Contest Runner Up in Fiction: Swallowed Flies
I try to remember that my husband is an angel of a man, a profferer of backrubs, bringer of flowers, an emergency therapist, whose only...
Spring Contest Winner in Fiction: We Tell Time in Stories, Not Hours
I don’t always know the difference between remembering and seeing, but Tinkerbell says that’s okay because only a fool believes in time and memory both.
Maximum Compound: Girl World / Lucy
Who gets a life sentence on the dirt planet and who gets life on a pleasure planet? Who knows. The sun goes down and it’s...
Available for purchase: Columbia Journal, issue 58
Columbia Journal's new print issue is now available for pre-order!
Review: The Illness Lesson by Clare Beams
Despite the fact that it takes place in 1871, The Illness Lesson feels eerily contemporary.
Animal Instincts
Everything feels like a death. I climb the tree and my husband hands me the bird.
Delusion: A short story by Ibrahim N. Al-Huraiyes translated from the Arabic
Pointing toward the carousel ride, where the child’s attention was fixed, he asked, “Why don’t you play with the other kids?”