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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The Italian Neorealist, who was perhaps best known for his film Blow-Up, died Monday at his home in Rome. He was 94.
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Nepali goddess Sajani Shakya has been stripped of her title — apparently because of her visit to the U.S. to promote a documentary in which she was featured. Elders in Nepal have said the trip tainted her purity.
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Producer Linda Perry has worked with Christina Aguilera, Pink, Alicia Keys and the Dixie Chicks, and she discovered James Blunt. But Perry faces what may be a producer's most formidable challenge: rehabilitating the career of Courtney Love.
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Tom Wright traveled as a road manager with the Rolling Stones, the Faces, the Who and other bands from the late '60s through the early '80s. But Wright is also a photographer — so while he was collecting indelible experiences in those decades, he was also collecting extraordinary images.
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Author Kurt Vonnegut called himself a free-thinking humanist. Others said his unerring moral compass, colloquial style, and ability to mix sadness and humor made Vonnegut the Mark Twain of his generation. The author's readers clung to his pointed observations of society and its shortcomings.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr., the acclaimed author of more than a dozen novels, short stories, essays and plays, died in Manhattan Wednesday. He was 84. His most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, was an iconic novel born out of his memories of war and its absurdities.
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A curiosity museum in Baltimore has closed its doors and auctioned off its quirky holdings. The American Dime Museum was a throwback to an earlier age of entertainment, when displays of oddities like Amazonian mummies and two-headed ducks held audiences spellbound. -
Spring Awakening is winning critical praise as a fresh interpretation of the Broadway musical. Based on a 19th-century play, the angst-ridden teen musical defies convention by dealing with tough topics and raw adolescent feelings.
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Film director Robert Altman died Monday at the age of 81. Altman was the man behind MASH, Gosford Park and, most recently, A Prairie Home Companion.
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Star writers gathered in New York City on Wednesday night for the National Book Awards ceremony. Books dealing with the events of Sept. 11, and war, were among the nominees. A graphic novel was also among the nominees, a first. Among the winners was Richard Powers' The Echo Maker, which took the prize for fiction.
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Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pamuk is a prominent journalist in his native country but has been criticized by Turkish nationalists in recent years for his remarks about Turkey's genocide of Armenians. His writing reflects an unflinching honesty and an optimistic view of East-West harmony.
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Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk wins the Nobel literature prize. Pamuk, 54, gained international acclaim for books including Snow, Istanbul and My Name Is Red. But he has also earned notoriety for legal troubles over his comments on Turkey's past.
