Cusk is a master of the illustrative anecdote, allowing her to telescope between the specific and the abstract.
Review: The Undying by Anne Boyer
Woven throughout the deeply personal story of Boyer's battle with breast cancer is a social and political critique of the breast cancer “industry.”
Review: When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl’s Book by Naja Marie Aidt, translated by Denise Newman
The engulfing panic of losing someone indispensable to you stops time. Needs and emotions are put on hold: hunger, sleep, lust, and ambition are stifled...
Untold Stories: Haiti
Fifteen minutes until visiting hours. Time dragged. Damien was sitting on the floor, his back leaning against the wall, trying to keep it together, waiting.
Review: Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe
Monroe is writing from inside the obsession. She is someone who is prone to what she calls “crime funks,” someone who has always been “murder-minded.”
Review: The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
Sarah M. Broom’s debut book The Yellow House reads like a multifaceted map of not just a place, but also an expanse of time, marking...
Review: Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
Trick Mirror is a book that only a millennial could write, but one who is smart enough to be able to see our lives objectively,...
Pain You Can’t Resist: An Interview with Emily Bernard
Emily Bernard talks about her new book of essays Black is the Body and why she can't resist the emotional cost of showing her scars.
Fall 2019 Contest: Meet the Judges
The first-ever Columbia Journal Fall Contest is now open for submissions in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and, for the first time, art. Our judges will be...
On Writing as Longing: An Interview with Michele Filgate
Michele Filgate is the kind of person who you can meet for the first time at a co-working space in SoHo, bond over both being...
Review: Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob
Good Talk whiplashes the reader from ease and pleasure to apprehension and concern, so that the reader is never truly comfortable.
An ‘Austere, Whispering Power’: An Interview with Colm Tóibín
This scholarly and writerly interview probes relationships presented by Colm Tóibín between art and living, psychology and fiction, form and national identities, fiction and politics,...