News Archive

Columbia Engineering hosted its first World Leaders Forum with Endeavor Greece and the School of the Arts, bringing together leaders in government, global development, technology, and art to discuss AI's impact on people and culture. Read more from Columbia Engineering.

Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the not-for-profit foundation of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), has selected Goldie E. Patrick '23 as the 2026-2027 Lloyd Richards New Futures Resident Artist.

Five Playwriting alums have their short plays included in Methuen Drama’s new anthology, The Future is Short, edited by Mitchell Thomas, award-winning actor, director, and professor at Westmount College. The anthology features 20 short plays of various genres with a run time under 15 minutes, “written by some of the most exciting contemporary voices in American theatre.” These inventive, resonant plays are catered to college and high school students developing their craft. 

Jinwoo Chong '21, author of the award-winning novel Flux, will release his third novel, Club Nine Tails, with Random House in March 2027–a novel about family, reconciliation, and a cross-country adventure.

Columbia University School of the Arts is excited to announce a new collaboration with The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS).

In Masquerade, a new immersive Off-Broadway production directed by Theatre alum Diane Paulus '97, audiences get to step into the world of the Phantom of the Opera. The show is set in a haunted opera house and follows the young soprano Christine Daaé, being tutored by the titular Phantom. Audiences are split into six groups, each guided through multiple interactive rooms and floors by a different pair of actors playing the lead duo. 

Across the Movi-verse: Writing on Film, 2011–2021, a new collection of essays by Adjunct Professor of Film and Film alum J. Hoberman '81, was published by Film Desk Books on August 25. The anthology gathers previously uncollected essays, tributes, reviews, and reflections from the period preceding his tenure as the film critic at The Village Voice. The Movi-verse contains essays on the Spaghetti Western, the films of the Obama era, the French notion of the film maudit, or cursed film, the U.S. distribution of the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and the film …

In her latest solo exhibition From Here at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (Virginia MOCA), Visual Arts Alum Vivian Chiu '19 asks us to consider the vessel—an object designed both to contain and to transport.

The 1959 film Araya documents the daily toil of villagers living on the titular Venezuelan peninsula. Read more from the Columbia Spectator.

The National Book Award Foundation announced its 25 finalists for the 77th National Book Award, spanning across Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. Among the list of works nominated as finalists for this prize are four books written by Columbia alumni: Paradiso 17 (Knopf, 2026) written by Hannah Lillith Assadi '13; Mother Tongue (Random House, 2026) by Sara Novic’s '14; Beginning Middle End (Knopf, 2026) by Valeria Luiselli (GSAS '15); and The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music …

On September 20, 2026 the International Institute of Film Science and Arts (IIFSA) awarded Film and Media Studies Professor Jane M. Gaines a prestigious fellowship.

Visual Arts students Cherina Cheng and Natalie Jacobs were recently awarded summer 2026 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grants.

Sean Mullin '06 led production on the tribute documentary Band of Brothers: Legacy, working alongside Executive Producers Tom Hanks and Rudy Reyes and Director Chase Millsap.

Alum Liba Vaynberg’s new play The Blue Parts is set to make its world premiere as part of Roundabout Theatre’s Roundabout Underground program. The show will begin previews on February 18, 2027, in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre. 

The novel, published by Little, Brown and Company, tells a multi-generational story which grounds itself in the myth of The Minotaur.

In 1919, Tejano legislator José Tomás Canales had gathered evidence of the Texas Rangers’ violence against Mexican workers and small landowners. Yet when the moment came to confront two leaders, he failed to call them to the stand. In These Bones Can Speak, Writing alum Adin Dobkin '20 investigates the forces behind that decision, as well as the political system that constrained Canales’s pursuit of accountability.

In her debut work of literary horror, Katie (HarperCollins, 2027), Associate Professor of Writing Dorothea Lasky follows a young New Yorker whose decision to become a surrogate mother draws her into a dangerous, possibly demonic world. Exploring the intersection of reproductive desire, financial insecurity, and manipulation, the novel turns an opportunity for a fresh start into mounting dread. Katie will be published on August 3, 2027.

My Stalkers, a new collection of short stories by Adjunct Assistant Professor Catherine Lacey '10, is set to hit shelves in January, 2027. My Stalkers (Macmillan, 2027) features a collection of nine original short stories that deal with women “becoming someone else or no one at all.” 

On September 26, 2026, the Jessica Ann Peavy Gallery welcomed Visual Arts alum Aristotle Forrester '24 as a newly represented artist with a celebration to mark the opening of his first solo exhibition, Blood and Water. Works featured in the exhibition—on view until November 7, 2026—are poignant, bold, colorful, and richly layered in both medium and meaning. 

This year’s Hampton’s International Film Festival featured two works from Columbia filmmakers: Dua Ji (short film) and Musk (documentary feature).

Professor and playwright Lynn Nottage, the first and only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice, has been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board. As a member of the board, Nottage will take part in the judging process determining the finalists and winners for the Pulitzer Prize in all of its categories in both Journalism, Books, Drama, and Music.

Visual Arts alum Heidi Howard '14 will join interactive sound art pioneer Liz Phillips for Live Processing Paint and Sound, a live performance at Roulette on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, at 8 pm.