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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Taylor Swift, whose latest album is now the first to surpass one billion Spotify streams in a single week, has smashed another record as well. -
A new single, "Primrose Hill," was co-written by Sean Ono Lennon and James McCartney, the youngest sons of Beatles musicians John Lennon and Paul McCartney. -
Professors and students at the University of South Florida mapped pitch, rhythm and duration to data about algae blooms and depletion of coral reefs to create an original composition. -
A Brief History of the Future, on PBS, is an example of a "protopian" show from a new production studio helmed by Kathryn Murdoch. She believes we need more hopeful stories abut the future. -
Louis Gossett Jr., the first Black man to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as a gunnery sergeant in An Officer and a Gentleman, has died. He was 87.
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YouTube is asking users to self-report when they post AI-generated videos. Experts say it's not good enough to ask people to admit when they're breaking the rules.
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The pop crooner was behind some of the biggest power ballads of the 1970s and '80s. His wife said he died in his sleep. -
Yamamoto's postwar childhood in Japan shaped his interest in the interplay of architecture and community. The jury of the prestigious architecture award cited the intergenerational power of his work. -
The Apollo Chamber Players in Houston, Texas, create concerts in response to book banning, the refugee crisis, the war in Gaza and other world events. Thousands of people attend their performances. -
Apfel's late-in-life emergence as a stylemaker was celebrated in magazines and museums. Her company made reproduction fabrics for the White House for decades. She became a fashion model at 97.
