Hisham Matar: On the In-Between and Mahfouz’s Dreams
Prose Editor Amine Mohammed Bit sat down with Libyan-American novelist, essayist, and memoirist Hisham Matar to discuss his latest work, a translation of Naguib Mahfouz’s dream journal entitled I Found Myself…The Last Dreams, which he co-edited with Diana Matar. Hisham Matar is the author of five books, including The Return, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, as well as numerous essays, articles, reviews, and short stories. Diana Matar is Distinguished Artist at Barnard College Columbia University, New York and teaches photography in the Comparative Literature program at Barnard College. Her most recent book, My America, was published by GOST Books in 2024, and is an archive and memorial for Americans who died in encounters with their police.
Srikanth Reddy: On Form and Figure-Ground Relationships
Editor-in-chief Su Ertekin-Taner sat down with poet, editor, and professor Srikanth Reddy. Srikanth Reddy’s latest book of poetry, Underworld Lit, was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s T.S. Eliot Four Quartets Prize, and a Times Literary Supplement “Book of the Year” for 2020. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, The Guardian (UK), The New York Times, and The Washington Post; he is the poetry editor of The Paris Review, and a co-editor of the Phoenix Poets book series at the University of Chicago Press. The recipient of fellowships from the Creative Capital Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Reddy is Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago. His book of lectures on poetry and painting, The Unsignificant, was published by Wave Books in Fall 2024.
Richard Siken: On Constructing a Glossary of Self
Editor-in-chief Su Ertekin-Taner sat down with poet and painter Richard Siken. Richard Siken’s book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and I Do Know Some Things (forthcoming, Copper Canyon Press, 2025). Siken is a recipient of fellowships from Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Omar Abu Samra: On Creating Beauty and Literary Freedom
Prose Editor Amine Mohammed Bit sat down with writer and literary critic Omar Abu Samra to discuss a chapter from his upcoming book, ‘Ana huwa al-nasheed, entitled “My Village, ‘Al-Shajarah,’” which was translated from the Arabic by Khader Barham. Abu Samra is a Palestinian writer, born in Haifa. He studies American and English literature in JGU in Mainz, Germany and published his first book “The First Trees” in 2023. He also works for Al-Araby Al-Jadid as a literary critic.
Vijay Seshadri: On Creating Energy in Poetry
Editor-in-chief Su Ertekin-Taner sat down with Vijay Seshadri. Vijay Seshadri is the author of five books of poems, including 3 Sections, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and, most recently, That Was Now, This Is Then, and many essays, reviews, and memoir fragments.
Zoë Hitzig: On Technology and the Body
Editor-in-chief Su Ertekin-Taner sat down with poet, editor, and economist Zoë Hitzig. Zoë Hitzig is the author of Mezzanine and Changes Book Prize-winning Not Us Now. Her poems appear in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, and The Drift, where she serves as poetry editor. She received a PhD in economics from Harvard in 2023.
Jesse Nathan: On Waffling and Irresolution
Editor-in-chief Su Ertekin-Taner sat down with poet, editor, and educator Jesse Nathan. Jesse Nathan's debut collection of poetry, Eggtooth, won the 2024 New Writers Award and the 2024 Housatonic Book Prize in Poetry. His work appears in the Paris Review, the New York Review of Books, Poetry, the Yale Review, and the Best American Poetry. His prose has been published in the New York Times and the Threepenny Review. Nathan was a founding editor of the McSweeney's Poetry Series, and he teaches literature in the English Department at UC Berkeley.
Corey Sobel: On Extra-Textual Layers
Editor-in-Chief Ryan Daar sat down with Corey Sobel, author of “Style” from the Columbia Review’s Spring 2021 issue. Corey’s debut novel, The Redshirt, was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, winner of the Independent Publisher Gold Medal for LGBT+ Fiction, and one of NPR’s Favorite Books of 2020. Learn more about the novel and order it here. Corey is at work on his forthcoming novel, which centers on how a racial slur travels through a family.
Making It Plausible: A Conversation With Andrew Martin
I first encountered Andrew Martin’s remarkable fiction after the publication of his fabulous first novel Early Work. Since then, I’ve been anticipating the publication of his short story collection, Cool for America, in which he assembles an ensemble of characters who, in concert, animate the usual assays of underemployment, the limits of overeducation, and the state of public consciousness in the contemporary age. Andrew and I met over Zoom to discuss the new collection, what makes a fiction plausible, generational writing, and the ever-recognizable self-seriousness of Columbia undergraduates.
Jihyun Yun: On Food and the Language of Intimacy
Jihyun Yun was first published in The Columbia Review’s 100th Volume with her piece, “The Leaving Season.” Yun’s writing uses food—its preparation, consumption, and cultural significance—to reflect on themes like womanhood and familial grief. Her first book of poetry (which includes “The Leaving Season”) won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize for poetry in 2019 and came out September 1st, 2020 from the Nebraska Press. Jihyun and I caught up over email after the release of her book.
Bryn Evans: Weight, Time, & the Afrofuture
Jake Skeets and Christopher Soto: On Literary Activism During Covid-19
Jake Skeets is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers (Milkweed Editions, 2019) and Christopher Soto is the editor of Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color (Nightboat Books, 2018). In this interview, they discuss the impact of Covid-19 on the Navajo Nation and how the pandemic intersects with mental health. They also discuss activism during the Trump era and their desires for the future of the literary world. This interview allows space to reflect on one of the most chaotic moments of the 21st century.
Sara Kachelman: On Friendship and the “Old-World Horror” of Climate Change
Sara Kachelman received the Columbia Review’s Spring 2020 Prose Prize for her short story “Friends of the Gyre.” Her story, about a group of people who befriend an enigmatic and terrible storm, first crossed our desk in January, but recent events have imbued the narrative about unlikely social relationships and unbalanced power dynamics with new salience. We were impressed by Sara’s humor, her attention to nature, and her sense of the eerie, and our contest judge, Jordan Kisner, was as well. Editor Sofia Montrone caught up with Sara over email last week to discuss her short story, climate change, and the necessity of the independent novella.
Interview with Mark Statman
The first thing that Mark Statman – translator, poet, and Columbia Review alumnus – told me during our phone conversation was that there were hummingbirds clustered in the flowering tree outside his window. If he seemed a little distracted, it was because he was watching the birds. This type of moment-to-moment attention is characteristic of Statman’s most recent work, Exile Home, which we discussed at length, as well as his time on The Columbia Review and his move to Mexico.
