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 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. -
A 24-year-old piano prodigy, Jahari Stampley, has won one of the most prestigious awards in jazz. The competition held by the Herbie Hancock Institute is widely seen as anointing new stars. -
The National Endowment for the Arts has selected Terence Blanchard, Willard Jenkins, Amina Claudine Myers and Gary Bartz for the prestigious honor. -
The Associated Press won two awards for its Ukraine coverage, including the prestigious Public Service award. The prize for fiction went to two books: Demon Copperhead and Trust. -
The Canadian singer-songwriter wrote classics like "If You Could Read My Mind," "Early Morning Rain" and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." -
Vijay Gupta was a 19-year-old violin prodigy when he joined the LA Philharmonic. Now he runs Street Symphony, an organization bringing music to clinics, jails and homeless shelters on Skid Row. -
The conductor has announced his diagnosis with an aggressive form of brain cancer and plans to step down as the group's artistic director. -
Teachout has died at the age of 65. He wrote acclaimed biographies of such arts figures as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and George Balanchine. -
The lautenwerck, an instrument like a lute and a harpsichord, almost went extinct in the 19th century, but forensic musicologists are bringing it back to life. -
The My Lai Massacre occurred 50 years ago this week in Vietnam. An opera featuring the Kronos Quartet and Van-Anh Vanessa Vo tells the story of an American soldier who tried to stop his own troops.
