By Julia Rendón Abrahamson, tr. by Madeleine Arenivar

Usually, at 9:00 more or less I’m in the shower. First I turn on the hot water and fill the bathroom with steam, even though, at that hour, the sun is beating down outside.

By Shruti Sonal

Mother, it feels like a betrayal to remember you in the language which ensured you would sit silently in the parent-teacher meetings at school, clutching the pleats of your saree, and hoping that the conversation would reach its conclusion even before it began.

By Clement Yue

Nobody loves this bird. Very few even really know what it looks like. It perches hidden in thick arboreal foliage⎯black plumage indistinguishable from the canopic shadows. I used to think it was yellow, until someone pointed out to my embarrassment that I was looking at orioles all my life.

Columbia Journal is excited to announce the winners and finalists of our 2024 Online Contest, which was judged by Jonas Eika, Jeanna Kadlec, Megan Fernandes, and Mónica de la Torre. 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.

By Ali Banach

The work’s size, its breathless metaphors, and its coquette-ish design all point toward contemporary trends that have spawned due to digitally-minded, attention-deficit reading lives. However, as a departure from other contemporary fragmentation, the book’s preoccupation with mysticism creates an internal justification for such formal choices.

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.

By Fran Matos

The skeleton in my neighbor's front yard
holds a sign that reads “come closer for a spell”
but I’m not looking for signs anymore.

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 -

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.

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.

By Liz von Klemperer

Aube Rey Lescure’s debut River East, River West is a searing social commentary that spans decades and perspectives.

By Jane Marchant

The taxi’s side mirror reflects the driver’s lit cigarette as he maneuvers through the night’s warm exhaust, dust, and sand. Yellow streetlights illuminate the concrete buildings and air conditioners flashing by. After checking into my hostel, I climb into a rickety bunk bed graffitied by past travelers. I am nervous. I am the only guest in the five-story building down a back alley off an alley somewhere in the haze of a city whose language I can neither read nor speak.

By Madeleine Voge

I was never chosen to be the naptime fairy, the one who tiptoed around the classroom and waved a wand with bells on the end of it because instead of curling up and closing my eager eyes, I stacked blocks and whispered with Brooks, the boy with long eyelashes who was allergic to bees.

A still life of a glass a lemon-squeezer half / a lemon and a little pot with drinking straws / and the light, so Picasso described one / of his paintings in a letter.

Columbia Journal is excited to announce the winners and finalists of our 2023 Online Contest, which was judged by Jackie Ess, Haley Mlotek, and Natalie Shapero. 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.