COLUMBIA: A Magazine of Poetry & Prose (Number 16) by GEDIMAN, Paul and David Elliott Kidd (Editors)

New York: Columbia University, 1991. Near fine. 153 pp. Featured inside: Czechoslovakian Writers After the Revolution. Columbia arrived on the scene with Nobel laureates in their pages. For its 1977 debut, Columbia: A Journal of Literature & Art got off to an auspicious start, snagging a short story by Nobel Prize–winner Kawabata Yasunari. That piece, “Footfalls,” is reprinted in the current number, 40, alongside work by Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, Charles Wright, and A.R. Ammons, and other highlights from the magazine’s impressive first 28 years. The magazine originated in the mind of Daniel Halpern, former chair of the Writing Division of the Columbia School of the Arts and now publisher of Ecco. In the mid-’70s, he wanted to make Columbia’s MFA program more student centered. “I explained to the administration that these kids were paying huge amounts of money for, essentially, one workshop,” he says. Along with new seminars and “short courses,” weeklong master classes taught by such luminaries as Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda, Halpern established a literary annual called Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose. From the beginning, he says, the publication was “completely” in the hands of the students. “It is a coast-to-coast magazine, and a very well-respected magazine,” says Smith. “But it’s also fundamentally a training ground for Columbia MFA students. A lot of our staff go on to become editors at places like Knopf and HarperCollins.”