tarah douglas describes her work as “conceptually motivated,” which is a way of saying she’s not tied to one medium. Though other projects like studies of jahyne and pillowsforsadboiysz have married photography and textiles, her most recent work, called daysmissingu, is a series of watercolors created over the duration of a period of grief. Often so watery that the pigments bleed together, these paintings are very intentional indices of an ongoing emotional experience, a way, douglas says, to represent her “internal-emotional landscape.” On a recent Saturday morning, we spoke on the phone about her work and about making space: safe spaces, space for grief, and space for responding to the world.

In conversation with Columbia Journal’s Online Poetry Editor Brian Wiora, the poet Alex Dimitrov discusses capitalism, social media, and his upcoming book, Love and Other Poems. After reading this interview, we hope you will read his new poem, “Having a Diet Coke with You” published here.

In this interview, Columbia MFA candidate Jared Jackson speaks with Joshua Furst about his second novel, Revolutionaries, and sheds light on critical choices he made while crafting the book, which transports the reader to the 1960s—a period of love and violence, and a touchstone of cultural significance for those with visions of radical change and societal disillusionment. Filtered through the sharp voice of Fred, a grown-up child of the counterculture, Revolutionaries takes off the nostalgic, free-loving, psychedelic sunglasses of the period, and glares at the cost that idealism— genuine or otherwise—has on the relationships of those involved.

A lot has changed for Louis Fratino in the past year, and his autobiographical paintings are a case in point. In Come Softly to Me, the twenty-five-year-old artist’s second solo show in New York and first at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., Fratino’s work has absorbed the City, where he settled after a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Berlin. In “Me,” we see the Chrysler building reflected in his pupils; in “The Williamsburg Bridge,” we see him walking alone along the waterfront, the horizon on fire. Cocteau- and Matisse-inspired male odalisques lounge nude beside open windows, and same-sex couples embrace on dance floors, club-lit as if inside an ultramarine and cadmium-red kaleidoscope.

In this interview, Columbia MFA graduate Caroline Bodian talks with Abbigail N. Rosewood about her debut, If I Had Two Lives. The novel is grounded in certain realities, realities of immigration and complex, yet enduring, female friendships, of loss and motherhood. Take a closer look and you’ll find a funhouse of mirrors, intense echoes, shifting parts, and blurred boundaries.

The Word Process is an interview series focusing on the writing process and aimed at illuminating the many ways that writers approach the same essential task. In this interview, Mira T. Lee, whose gorgeous debut, Everything Here Is Beautiful, came out in paperback earlier this year, talks about the inspiration for her book, the process of writing her very first novel, and when she decided writing should be her career and not just her side-hustle.

In this interview, nonfiction MFA candidate Vera Carothers spoke to translator Emma Ramadan about her career path and about translating Delphine Minoui’s newly released memoir, I’m Writing You From Tehran, a story about Iran’s complex history of political unrest and one journalist’s search to be closer to her paternal grandfather.

In this interview, MFA candidate Jai Hamid Bashir talks with Ross Gay about his new nonfiction book, The Book of Delights. Ross Gay is the author of three books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books in 2019.

Esmé Weijun Wang is a novelist and essayist. She is the author of the New York Times-bestselling essay collection, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019), for which she won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. Her debut novel, The Border of Paradise, was called a Best Book of 2016 by NPR and one of the 25 Best Novels of 2016 by Electric Literature. She was named by Granta as one of the “Best of Young American Novelists” in 2017 and won the Whiting Award in 2018. Born in the Midwest to Taiwanese parents, she lives in San Francisco, and can be found at esmewang.com and on Twitter @esmewang. Here, she talks with MFA candidate Audrey Deng about cultural stigmas around mental illness, “narrative therapy,” and academia.

In this interview, MFA candidate Katie Shepherd talks to Valeria Luiselli about her new novel, Lost Children Archive.

Jennifer Haigh is a novelist and short story writer. Her most recent book, the novel Heat and Light, won a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was named a Best Book of 2016 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR. Her previous books include FAITH; THE CONDITION; BAKER TOWERS; MRS. KIMBLE, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction; and the short story collection NEWS FROM HEAVEN, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award and the PEN New England Award in Fiction. She is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow.

As editor-in-chief of The Rumpus, Marisa Siegel manages one of the internet’s most original and exciting websites, a space that prioritizes bringing marginalized voices into the spotlight. To learn more about her career and her path, MFA nonfiction candidate Elena Sheppard spoke to Siegel about her MFA experience and the formative roles and work that led her to where she is today.

In this interview with nonfiction MFA candidate Sarah Rosenthal, author Lisa Gornick discusses her latest novel, The Peacock Feast, as well as writing about real historical figures in fiction, the many overlaps between writing and psychology, how design and architecture can inform the writing process, and much more.

In this interview, Charlee Dyroff talks to Briallen Hopper about her new essay collection, Hard to Love, out February 5, 2019. Hard to Love was named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by both Lit Hub and The Millions.

In this interview, MFA fiction student Sophia Mansingh talks to writer and chair of the Columbia University fiction program Sam Lipsyte. Lipsyte is the bestselling author of Home Land; Venus Drive; The Fun Parts; and The Ask. He has also been published in The New Yorker, Tin House, The Washington Post, The Paris Review, and Playboy. He was a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow.

In conversation with Columbia Journal’s Online Poetry Editor Brian Wiora, the poet Cynthia Cruz, discusses Nomadism, the nature of dreams, and of course, her poetry. After reading this interview, we hope you will read a selection of her poems, published here.

If hard writing makes for easy reading, the stories collected in Chris Power’s debut, Mothers, must have been hell for their author—who has made a public study of the form in his Guardian column since 2007. These stories exhibit a precision and clarity that seem effortless, much like his descriptions. Likewise, there is an accessibility to his themes, commensurate with the resonance of his imagery. Who has not observed a tree branch that “reached out…like a withered arm,” or stepped into a body of water to watch it “wrinkle at [their] ankles”? So it is with the difficulties faced by his protagonists. While mothers inform this work in myriad ways, the scope of this collection is in no way limited by this, at times indiscernible, motif. Narrators vary in age, sex, and orientation. But they all, in some way, fail to actualize their ambitions—particularly those concerning interpersonal relationships. Happiness may write white, but Chris Power doesn’t. Still, his masterful prose and incisive explorations of universal themes will delight anyone who purchases this collection.

The Word Process is an interview series focusing on the writing process and aimed at illuminating the many ways that writers approach the same essential task. In this interview, 2019 Spring Contest fiction judge Alexandra Kleeman talks about the piece of petrified wood she keeps on her desk, why patience is key to craft, and the reason that the writing process should not be a place of comfort.

In this interview with fiction MFA candidate Sonya Gray Redi, M. Kasper discusses his translation process and how he went about creating facsimile-style translations of some of the ‘unacknowledged literary greats of the twentieth century,’ the Belgian surrealists Paul Nougé, Paul Colinet, and Louis Scutenaire, in his new work Ideas Have No Smell.

In this interview, MFA nonfiction candidate Veronika Kelemen speaks with writer and Columbia professor Meghan Daum. Daum is the author of two collections of essays, My Misspent Youth and The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion; a memoir, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House; and the novel The Quality of Life Report, and also edited the anthology Selfish, Shallow & Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers On The Decision Not To Have Kids. She is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of the 2016 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in creative writing.