Columbia University Faculty Selects

Come for the talent. Stay for the camaraderie and cocktails.

Thomas Bouman, whose fiction appears in Meridian, received an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Columbia University in 2005. He currently works in book publishing and is a founding member of The Flanks, a country band. He lives in Brooklyn and Jerkhampton, New York, and is finishing a novel about rock and roll.

Poet Thomas Hummel's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Canary, Colorado Review, CROWD, Denver Quarterly, Fence, VOLT, WebConjunctions, and elsewhere. In 2005, he was one of the winners of the Fence/Summer Literary Seminars Poetry Contest and the recipient of the Benjamin T. Burns Poetry Prize from Columbia University. He currently works for the Estate of Jackson Mac Low and lives in Inwood.

Robin Elizabeth Kirman teaches in the Undergraduate Writing Program at Columbia University and is finishing her first novel, Sunday World. Sunday World is the story of Ethan Frank (Ph.D., Phil.), home from grad school and in principled revolt against homo instrumentum–or, as his father sees it, principled against getting a job. Under the dubious influence of the celebrated logician and Soviet dissident Ilya Ilyushkin, Ethan takes up the cause of finding employment for Ilyushkin's friends, the Boiler Men, intellectuals who once defied Communism by acts of "conscientious idleness,"but now are hungry for work visas to America, though they happen to be the worst employees in the global marketplace.

What's Faculty Selects? The first Thursday of each month the Columbia MFA program will again host the reading series Faculty Selects started by professor Binnie Kirschenbaum. Three former students selected by the facultywill read each time. These young writers have finished their coursework and are finished with or near to finished with their first books, but do not yethave a book contract and/or an agent. This is an opportunity to showcase some of our best writers to you.

Hosted by Elyssa East, Columbia MFA, 2005