If it’s August, it’s — yes — time to catch up with this year’s crop of 100 stupendously accomplished Columbia Publishing Course graduates. As in years past, we’ve captured their collective chutzpah in the composite biographical sketch below (all achievements are taken from actual student biographies). Live dangerously and see them for yourself at Columbia’s Career Day, to be held August 4 at the Time Life Building in New York; call (212) 854-8047 or email publishing@jrn.columbia.edu.
To her parents’ surprise, Ms. Student did not become a bull-rider like her brother, but instead self-published her first book at age seven using a recycled diary, stickers, and Crayola markers. According to her town librarian, she set a record for borrowing books at age five, and at fifteen, she took that early love of reading to The Associated Press where she became the AP’s youngest-ever book reviewer. Having composed her college application in rhyming verse, she entered Yale with a limited worldview yet graduated with a thesis focusing on linguistic cross-dressing in three of Shakespeare’s comedies. Ms. Student also hopes to translate Shakespeare into Mandarin as part of her Fulbright scholarship to Taiwan. As a senior, she interned for a literary agency and was named Query Guru and Goddess of Photocopying. Writing about collective memory and the architectural landscapes of Paris and studying Francophone literature over cappuccinos at the Sorbonne fueled Ms. Student’s desire to embrace a career in the alchemy of language and culture. While working as a consultant and technical writer in the drinking water industry, she pursued a freelance writing career, studying creative writing under Ann Beattie; her prose includes “So Not Kosher,” exploring the physiognomy of her Ashkenazi nose. She has also illustrated a German children’s book, which was exhibited in the WorldExpo2000 in Hannover. After leaving her job as a video game publicist and interning at the Howard Stern Show, she wrote one line of an episode of Family Law, a CBS series cancelled last spring. Despite a vocal injury, she still sings jingles and once auditioned for Star Search, but now dedicates most of her free time to Ashtanga yoga, metal smithing, and syncretism. Our munificent student has also recently competed in a fundraising Iron Chef tournament. Still donning sneakers in a world of Manolos, she has mountaineered in the Grand Tetons and was raised to appreciate a good horse.
