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 very earliest movies were all long takes, but the immersive minimalism of one-shot films carry extra appeal in an era of congested platforms and CGI overload.
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Contestants on the new social-media-based reality show, The Circle, never meet in person. Their online profiles may not be what they seem — reminding us of a certain kind of literary drama.
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Filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton previously had a job working with foster children at a group home. He believes that work — listening, understanding, communicating — helped prepare him for directing.
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2019 saw kinder, gentler reality TV in both the U.S. and the U.K. Some say it's a response to nasty politics and nasty old reality TV.
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Actor Danny Aiello died on Thursday at age 86. He was best known — and received an Oscar nomination — for playing the pizza parlor owner in Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing.
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As half of Roxette, Fredriksson was one of Sweden's most notable pop exports, selling tens of millions of albums and garnering several hit songs.
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Order a drink, but hold the bartender? As it becomes relatively more expensive to run restaurants and bars, some are saving money by replacing human servers with pour-your-own electronic taps.
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TV networks have standards that minimize tobacco use on shows, and Netflix now does, too. But streaming companies lack public policies about smoking cannabis onscreen, and doctors say that hurts kids.
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New York City welcomes the U.S. women's national soccer team after their World Cup win with a ticker tape parade on Wednesday.
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At MAD magazine's peak in the early 1970s, its circulation peaked at more than 2 million. The magazine will shift to printing collections of old content and end-of-year specials with new material.
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Two-time Oscar winning screenwriter William Goldman has died at 87. Goldman wrote such classic movies as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men and The Princess Bride.
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William Goldman wrote the scripts for more than 30 movies, including Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, All the President's Men and The Princess Bride.