Columbia Selects at the KGB Bar! We are delighted to announce the return of Columbia Selects—our storied alumni reading series—to the KGB Bar for the 2025-26 season!
Susan Gelles's '16 work has appeared in The New York Times, Twins Magazine, The Lascaux Review, and other publications. She can also be heard in a New York Times podcast discussing her Modern Love essay. She is in the final stages of completing a memoir titled The Marvelous and the Real, which explores her life as the daughter of a man and woman who were shaped by their own difficult childhoods in Puerto Rico and Ireland, respectively. She lives with her family in the suburbs, but her dream is that in old age she will live in an elevator building on Broadway.
Camille Kit Jacobson '22 is a writer from Los Angeles, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review Daily, Catapult, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She received her BA in English from Harvard University and an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, and is represented by Samantha Shea of Georges Borchardt, Inc. She is working on her first novel.
Gordon Haber’s '02 writing on religion and culture has appeared in Arc, Killing the Buddha, Religion Dispatches, The Forward, and Salon. His recent short fiction has been in Bodega, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, and The Short Story Project. He’s also published three best-selling Kindle Singles, including his novellas False Economies and Adjunctivitis. His awards include a Fulbright Fellowship to Poland and two Queens Arts Fund New Work Grants, as well as residencies at MacDowell and the Toji Culture Centre of South Korea. His Korean War novel The First Hard Fight will be published by Envelope Books in 2027. He does not live in Brooklyn.
What is Columbia Selects? Columbia Selects is an alumni reading series hosted by the Columbia MFA Writing Program. 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 2027!
Columbia Selects ([email protected]) is curated by Bryan VanDyke '00 and Emily Austin '10.
Come for the talent. Stay for the camaraderie and cocktails.
