Partnership with Columbia University Press Offers New Platform for Global Authors

Safwan M. Masri

Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development

In so many homes around the world, books are well-loved and omnipresent, earning a place in almost every room of the house. We read for many reasons: to learn, to be transported, to connect to different worlds and different people.

The Columbia Global Centers is proud of its partnership with Columbia University Press: A regular book series, “In Conversation With,” featuring webinar discussions with leading authors on their latest works, paired with leading experts as moderators. 

My enthusiasm for this partnership, one could argue, has deep roots. Years ago, I was struck by J.D. Salinger’s comment in his novel Catcher in the Rye: “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.” I have long felt a partiality to writers who create that intimacy within the narrative, as if speaking directly to me. Inspired by Salinger, who I suspect may not have acted on his own wish, I have, on occasion, reached out to call an author I admired, as I have in the recent past after reading Isabella Hamad’s The Parisian, Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love, Suad Amiry’s Sharon and my Mother in Law, and Hisham Matar’s The Return. In the process, fabulous new friendships have been forged. 

Now, through our “In Conversation With…” programming, it is with delight that I can share my lifelong passion for books and book discussion in a way that is global, available to all, but is still an intimate and perhaps illuminating journey with the author. Please join us for these great conversations, live or as recordings you can access on our website. I hope Salinger would approve.

Eric Schwartz

Editorial Director
Columbia University Press

We publishers are in the ideas business. We help authors transform their thoughts into coherent arguments, defended by evidence, that we hope will resonate with an audience, contribute to the body of human knowledge, and improve the world. Sometimes we are successful and sometimes not, but in all cases the possibility is there; we are forever in pursuit of connecting authors to readers.   

In the spring of 2020  we publishers found ourselves in a time of crisis but also opportunity. The most immediate point of connection for authors and readers was impossible due to shuttered bookstores, canceled conferences, and the elimination of non-essential travel. Thankfully, a technology that was always available - the video call - but seldom used  became an essential tool and filled the void. While socially distanced, it made the scope of our social worlds wider, spanning continents. When a call around the corner is the same as a call across continents, we are no longer constrained by the limits of the physical environment in sharing our books and the ideas they contain. The possibility that was always there was by necessity, even greater. 

To this end, collaborating with Safwan Masri and his team at the Columbia Global Centers for “In Conversation With” is a natural for us at Columbia University Press. It was born of the initial phase of the pandemic and extended beyond, a partnership imbued with expansive potentiality of allowing readers throughout the world to discover our authors through the engaged network of individuals that the Columbia Global Centers has cultivated for over a decade. The Global Centers are one of the great resources of our University community, providing access points throughout the world for communication and connection. We are proud to join them in an expression of our shared value of the pursuit of knowledge and social connection through the love of books.