Events

We are delighted to announce the return of Columbia Selects, the Writing Program’s storied alumni reading series! Join us this Thursday, November 4, at 7 pm, for our fabulous lineup of Erin Pesut '15, Jimin Seo '10, and Shelby Wardlaw '19.

What is Columbia Selects?
The first Thursday of each month the Columbia MFA program hosts a reading series featuring Writing Program alumni. These fresh talents are finished with (or close to finished with) their first books, but do not yet have a book contract and/or an agent. In recent years, many of our featured writers have achieved critical and commercial success. This is your chance to glimpse who you'll be reading in 2023!

For the online 2021-22 season, readings will take place on the first Thursday of November, December, February, and March.

Columbia Selects is curated by Bryan VanDyke and Emily Austin.

Erin Pesut earned a degree in creative writing from Warren Wilson College and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her writing has appeared on Vermont Public Radio and in Legacy Magazine, The Peal,& Owl & Spade, and Classifieds: An Anthology of Prose Poems. She was a finalist for the inaugural CRAFT Creative Nonfiction Award. Born in South Carolina, she now lives in Vermont.

Jimin Seo is a Korean immigrant and lives between Manhattan and Cochecton, NY with his partner, Gabriel. He teaches at Baruch College and is literary editor of the arts publication White Zinfandel. He received his MFA from Columbia University and was Richard Howard’s longtime assistant. His poem in response to artist Shaun Leonardo’s exhibition The Breath of Empty Space was recently on view at The Bronx Museum.

Shelby Wardlaw is a writer, teacher, and translator from Austin, Texas. Her fiction, non-fiction and Russian poetry translations have appeared in Drafthorse, Interim, Northwest Review, Hunger Mountain, Fiction Southeast, and iō Literary Journal. She was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Pigeon Pages Fiction Contest and was a finalist for both the 2021 Salamander Fiction Prize and the 2021 McGlinn Prize for Fiction. Shelby was selected as one of the top five finalists in The Writer magazine’s 2020 Short Story Contest and was praised by their editorial staff as a “stunningly talented writer.” Shelby is currently working on her first novel.