It’s the wrong exit, and I’m lost on my way
to Malibu Beach. I might not hear the freeway
if the car windows were up, but it’s hot,

The poems below have been excerpted from a longer work called Wulf & Eadwacer, an experimental translation by M.L. Martin of the Anglo-Saxon poem “Wulf ond Eadwacer.” As Martin explains, “code-switching between the original Old English and Modern English, Wulf & Eadwacer embraces the proto-feminist, disjunctive voice of the original poem so that its enigmatic nature and plurality can fully be explored for the first time.”

They were boys with big dreams of being doctors, and lawyers, and businessmen. Tonight, they were stuck in the sandbox digging for buried treasure. Oogoo Poogoo had the shovel. He was the youngest of them all. 18. Freshman at Oklahoma State, digging for buried treasure in the sandbox behind an abandoned elementary school. Where had he gone so wrong? Bid, Rush, Pledge, Frat. All of it a mistake. Now Oogoo Poogoo needed to find sixty-six cents in a child’s sandbox to make it into Theta Delt. If he could find it, he’s to save his spot in the fraternity.

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.

These poems by Chilean poet Stella Díaz Varín have been taken from her 1959 collection, ‘Time, Imaginary Measure,’ and have been translated from Spanish by Rebecca Levi.

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.

At dawn, after they drove me
by emergency to the hospital, or
the mansion on the outskirts of the city.

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.

These poems by Lidija Dimkovska have been translated from the original Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh.

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.

While the publishing process contains many vital roles to insure readers discover great books, no other job is quite as immediate as that of a bookseller. The best booksellers are not only dream readers for writers, but they are also interested in developing relationships— to customers, of course, but first and foremost to books themselves. Booksellers put the strange, the exciting, and the revelatory into our hands. Below are the books that beloved indie booksellers from across New York City are looking forward to in 2019.

Canon Fodder is an ongoing series of essays where writers talk about the books they’ve held close relationships with in their lives and why those books deserve a second read by a broader literary audience. The first essay in the series looked at the young adult novel, Catherine, Called Birdy.

Sun a thin-red lip,
dim through slit in chthonic
cavity, each berry

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.

The editors are delighted to officially announce that the first-ever Columbia Journal Spring Contest is now open for submissions in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Our judges will be Alexandra Kleeman (fiction), Tommy Pico (poetry), and Kiese Laymon (nonfiction). The three winners of the Spring Contest will be published online on columbiajournal.org and will receive a cash prize of $250 each. At least three finalists will be selected and announced in each of the three genres in the spring. Submissions open today on Submittable, and the deadline to submit is February 15. There is a $10 entry fee for each submission. You can read the full contest guidelines and more about this year’s judges below.

For nearly 10 years, my haircuts were cheap and they were good. To me, in fact, they were excellent. I got them from a barber named Gasper (from the Italian, Gaspare) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Most of the trips I took to Gasper’s came after I had moved out of the neighborhood to South Brooklyn. Other customers trekked further than me—from Hicksville, Long Island or from towns in New Jersey. Others had been customers for longer than my nine years. Some had gotten their hair cuts or shaves or shoulder massages (yes, he did shoulder massages with an old school, hand-held, vibrating machine) by Gasper for decades.

Once Upon A River arrived in my new, American mailbox mere days after my British visa expired. I spent the last three years living in London, and this book immediately transported me back to England, but not the England I know. It is not one of nightclubs and gentrification, but instead a gothic land pulled straight out of fairytales, where dragons are the topic of small talk and ghosts are commonplace, not debated. The inhabitants of this tale understand its logic, philosophizing at one point that ‘…just ‘cause a thing’s impossible don’t mean it can’t happen.’

With the start of 2019 comes a bevy of new books to explore. And while the list is overwhelmingly endless, we’ve done a little of the homework for you and selected a few nonfiction books we can’t wait to get our hands on. From works by icons like Toni Morrison, to debuts from rising stars like Jia Tolentino, 2019 has a little something for every type of nonfiction reader. Here are 12 forthcoming releases that have our nonfiction loving hearts all aflutter.

Canon Fodder is an ongoing series of essays where writers talk about the books they’ve held close relationships with in their lives and why those books deserve a second read by a broader literary audience.

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.