Neda Ulaby
Neda Ulaby reports on arts, entertainment, and cultural trends for NPR's Arts Desk.
Scouring the various and often overlapping worlds of art, music, television, film, new media and literature, Ulaby's stories reflect political and economic realities, cultural issues, obsessions and transitions.
A twenty-year veteran of NPR, Ulaby started as a temporary production assistant on the cultural desk, opening mail, booking interviews and cutting tape with razor blades. Over the years, she's also worked as a producer and editor and won a Gracie award from the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation for hosting a podcast of NPR's best arts stories.
Ulaby also hosted the Emmy-award winning public television series Arab American Stories in 2012 and earned a 2019 Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan. She's also been chosen for fellowships at the Getty Arts Journalism Program at USC Annenberg and the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism.
Before coming to NPR, Ulaby worked as managing editor of Chicago's Windy City Times and co-hosted a local radio program, What's Coming Out at the Movies. A former doctoral student in English literature, Ulaby has contributed to academic journals and taught classes in the humanities at the University of Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University and at high schools serving at-risk students.
Ulaby worked as an intern for the features desk of the Topeka Capital-Journal after graduating from Bryn Mawr College. But her first appearance in print was when she was only four days old. She was pictured on the front page of the New York Times, as a refugee, when she and her parents were evacuated from Amman, Jordan, during the conflict known as Black September.
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Who'd have guessed that a centuries-old game would become 2020's hard-to-find, must-have toy? Sales spiked after the release of the hit Netflix show, and now toy analysts are warning of a shortage.
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"I've been an artist since I was a child," says James "Yaya" Hough. After serving 27 years in prison, he is now the first-ever artist in residence at the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. -
American poet Louise Glück won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Also a Pulitzer Prize winner, she becomes the 16th woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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The 2020 prize was awarded to Gluck for what the Swedish Academy said was "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."
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Acclaimed singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle has died at age 38. His Facebook page announced his death Sunday, with no other details provided.
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The director of the museum, Deborah L. Hughes, suggests that the best way to honor Anthony would be to take a clear stance against voter suppression and to advocate for human rights for all. -
Pete Hamill, a legendary newspaperman, died Wednesday in his hometown of New York City of heart and kidney failure after a fall on Saturday. He was 85. -
In a survey of more than 750 museum directors, 33% of them said there was either a "significant risk" of closing permanently by next fall or that they didn't know if their institutions would survive. -
When the Roosevelt administration rolled out funding for artists, musicians, writers and actors during the Great Depression, it helped create a new vision of American culture.
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Pulitzer administration has announced this year's best works in journalism, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and music on Monday.
