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 radio and online stories reflect political and economic realities, cultural issues, obsessions and transitions, as well as artistic adventurousness— and awesomeness.
Over the last few years, Ulaby has strengthened NPR's television coverage both in terms of programming and industry coverage and profiled breakout artists such as Ellen Page and Skylar Grey and behind-the-scenes tastemakers ranging from super producer Timbaland to James Schamus, CEO of Focus Features. Her stories have included a series on women record producers, an investigation into exhibitions of plastinated human bodies, and a look at the legacy of gay activist Harvey Milk. Her profiles have brought listeners into the worlds of such performers as Tyler Perry, Ryan Seacrest, Mark Ruffalo, and Courtney Love.
Ulaby has earned multiple fellowships at the Getty Arts Journalism Program at USC Annenberg as well as a fellowship at the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism to study youth culture. In addition, Ulaby's weekly podcast of NPR's best arts stories. Culturetopia, won a Gracie award from the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation.
Joining NPR in 2000, Ulaby was recruited through NPR's Next Generation Radio, and landed a temporary position on the cultural desk as an editorial assistant. She started reporting regularly, augmenting her work with arts coverage for D.C.'s Washington City Paper.
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. Her film reviews and academic articles have been published across the country and internationally. For a time, she edited fiction for The Chicago Review and served on the editing staff of the leading academic journal Critical Inquiry. Ulaby taught classes in the humanities at the University of Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University and at high schools serving at-risk students.
A former doctoral student in English literature, Ulaby worked as an intern for the features desk of the Topeka Capital-Journal after graduating from Bryn Mawr College. She was born in Amman, Jordan, and grew up in the idyllic Midwestern college towns of Lawrence, Kansas and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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Escobedo had been leading Kimmel's house band since the show launched in 2003. The musician and the comedian were childhood friends in Las Vegas. -
Twenty-nine sailors drowned when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in the Great Lakes' icy waters on Nov. 10, 1975. The ship was immortalized in a surprise hit 1976 folk ballad by Gordon Lightfoot. -
Haunted car washes have become a national phenomenon, with hundreds of Halloween-themed locations around the country. -
It's been 85 years since The Great Dictator first dazzled audiences in 1940. It was a big risk for one of the world's most popular performers to take a stand against fascism on film. -
The decades-old radical troupe Bread and Puppet, famed for its protest art including giant puppets, is touring again — mixing circus, politics and bread in a sharply polarized moment. -
Rocky Horror aficionados used to attend screenings of the film over and over to take notes on the details. Accurately mirroring every line and dance move has gotten easier over time. -
In HIM, Withers plays a rising quarterback. His on-screen mentor, Marlon Wayans, had some real-life advice — and a reading list — for the young actor. -
In HIM, Withers plays a rising quarterback. His on-screen mentor, Marlon Wayans, had some real-life advice — and a reading list — for the young actor.
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A movie star to his core, Robert Redford has died after a visionary career in cinema, including founding the Sundance Institute that transformed the market for independent films. -
She recorded a magical debut album on Blue Note and was later named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.
