Columbia Journal is excited to announce the winners and finalists of our 2022 Print Contest, which was judged by Jonathan Escoffery, Qian Julie Wang, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and Valzhyna Mort. […]

“What would the history of literature look like if it began, not with Homer and his war-hungry heroes, but with a woman from ancient Iraq, who sang her hymns to […]

Today at work I walked in on Sarah in the work bathroom adjusting her outfit in the full-length mirror, she jumped when I opened the door. I found myself thinking […]

Lindsay Turner is the author of the poetry collections The Upstate (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming) and Songs & Ballads (Prelude, 2018). She translates contemporary Francophone poetry and philosophy and is Assistant Professor of English […]

I cried while sitting on the toilet the other day. It’s not what you think, I promise. The culprit was not a sour taste of spoiled food or night of drinking […]

What does it take to achieve our childhood dreams? What do our ambitions teach us about ourselves? Since its publication in 1998, Homer Hickam’s coming-of-age memoir Rocket Boys, about the […]

A Review of the Monk’s Work, Teachings, and Legacy 1 Year After His Death Known for his teachings on Buddhism and how to bring mindfulness—the idea of being aware of […]

The woman, in order to have sex with her husband, had to write it all out after it happened. When they were young, before the kids, and they had sex […]

The woman, in order to have sex with her husband, had to write it all out after it happened. When they were young, before the kids, and they had sex […]

Cheyenne and I are in her bathroom applying our makeup under the drop lights her dad got for cheap. It’s her very own half bath with double sinks so we […]

2022 Columbia Journal Print Contest – Submissions Open from December 15, 2022, to December 31, 2022 January 15, 2023 The Columbia Journal is delighted to announce that the 2022 Print […]

My sister’s the one who ran away on a headless horse. She escaped with her bruises to a land that didn’t know her, built a room with sixteen walls and […]

It’s not even noon, but the sun’s way high, and Johnny’s on the jukebox. I’m sitting in the world’s shiniest diner, staring at the woman who has the most beautiful […]

This is not a lie: My interview for a job as an inmate tutor in the GED program at a federal prison was two questions long. Question One. Can you […]

some thanks some memories preserve shared edges; us bearing our asymmetry, you dogearing seams against my thigh… an infinite double- bind persists: two things might not be equal but i […]

This place is haunted. Or it could be, with its bravado of wind and rolling whitecaps and the rhythm imbued by waves slapping the rock wall. All an implication of […]

[Moved Somewhere] Moved somewhere. Stayed up to midnight. Flew elsewhere. Came back. Got […]

My mother wants to sell me oils. The oils smell like fresh-cut flowers and citrus fruits and the fishbowl stench of a house that’s been left unoccupied for several months. […]

I had a job over the summer, not because of financial necessity but because my mother held an unshakable belief in the virtue of work. She said that I needed […]