News

Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Writer and Director Jamal Joseph

Film Professor Jamal Joseph has written and directed for Black Starz, HBO, Fox TV, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. and A&E. 

Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Nonfiction Writer Lis Harris

Associate Professor Lis Harris was a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1970 to 1995. In addition to innumerable articles, reviews and commentaries, she is the author of Holy Days: The World of a Hasidic Family.

Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Screenwriter and Essayist Trey Ellis

Associate Professor Trey Ellis is an Emmy-nominated screenwriter, an American Book Award-winning novelist and playwright. He has written screenplays for, among others, Columbia Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, HBO and Showtime. 

Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Nobel Laureate, Novelist Orhan Pamuk
Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Cultural Critic Margo Jefferson
Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Short Story Writer and Poet Alan Ziegler
Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Novelist Colm Tóibín
Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Nonfiction Writer Andrew Solomon

Andrew Solomon, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center, has just assumed the presidency of PEN American Center. His most recent book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (2012), won the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction. A previous book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2001 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2002. Solomon has written numerous articles for the The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum and other publications on a wide range of topics…

Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Playwright David Henry Hwang

The work of David Henry Hwang, an associate professor and head of the School of the Arts’ playwrighting concentration, includes the plays M. Butterfly, Chinglish, Golden Child, Yellow Face, The Dance and the Railroad and FOB, as well as the Broadway musicals Aida (co-author), Flower Drum Song (2002 revival) and Disney’s Tarzan.

Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Novelist Gary Shteyngart

Associate Professor Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the United States seven years later. He released his debut memoir, Little Failure, in 2014, to much critical acclaim.

Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Nonfiction Writer, Novelist Heidi Julavits

Associate Professor Heidi Julavits is the editor, with Sheila Heti and Leanne Shapton, of 2014’s Women in Clothes, a book of essays, photographs and reminiscences about how women feel about their clothing.

Literary Lion: 5 Questions with Screenwriter Katherine Dieckmann

Associate Professor Katherine Dieckmann is a film director and screenwriter known for her lyrical, character-driven work. Her feature films A Good Baby (2000) and Diggers (2006) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, while Motherhood (2009) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

NASA Mercury Mission May Hold Clues to Earth's Origins and Evolution

Sean Solomon, director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, has been leading NASA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury for the last four years. MESSENGER is the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

Rare Book & Manuscript Library Houses a History of Publishing

Within the Columbia Rare Book & Manuscript Library’s trove of publishing industry records is a single index card that notes the delivery of a manuscript by an unpublished author titled Go Set a Watchman. It is the only known record of the first draft of a novel that would become the 1960 blockbuster To Kill A Mockingbird.

On Exhibit: A Cloistered Figure on Display at Columbia

Thomas Merton (CC’38, MA’39) was a monk, mystic, best-selling author, poet, civil rights activist and photographer. These facets of his life and more are on display at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library in a show that celebrates the centennial of his birth and showcases Columbia’s collection of his papers and photographs.