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 CityPaper.
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.
-
Three brand-new cable channels all share exactly the same problem: How do you wrench the eyeballs of 20-somethings away from their gadgets and toward old-fashioned regular TV?
-
The show's self-professed feminist creators wanted to take on a type generally scorned in popular culture. It's a favorite among critics, but one reviewer worries it will suffer from the Cougar Town effect — good show, terrible name. -
Ben Winters' mystery novels are set in the capital of New Hampshire, a community hardly known for its crime or intrigue. The twist? In his books, the planet is about to be hit by an asteroid, and everyone knows they're soon going to die. Amid the chaos, one Concord cop fights for law and order.
-
Most Americans say public libraries are important to the community — but eight states don't actually support them. Texas has cut budgets drastically; in Vermont, local librarians must go hand in hand to town meetings every year. Neda Ulaby reports on the landscape of library funding across the U.S.
-
Part of understanding African sacred music means thinking about its colonial context. It's the music of oppressed people combined with the music of their oppressors. For decades, Fred Onovwerosuoke has collected and arranged this music for choral groups. -
A new show on ABC Family follows a family with one biological kid, two adopted kids and a new addition, a teenage foster kid. Given how fostering is such an inherently dramatic situation, why hasn't this ever been the premise of a TV show before?
-
Neda Ulaby looks at a new summer drama about foster families, which — perhaps surprisingly — strikes real foster kids as getting a lot of things right. -
NPR's Neda Ulaby investigates a trend in toys that sounds awfully familiar: Manufacturers are finding new ways to get kids interested in playing with blocks, both real and virtual. -
What happens when Steven Spielberg's idealism and Stephen King's cynicism combine in a CBS TV series? Under the Dome may be packed with sci-fi what-ifs, but beneath its mysteries is a small American town working out some very familiar human problems. -
Adventure Time isn't your typical cartoon, but it's capturing an audience of kids and adults who believe it's getting at something special.
