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Arts & Entertainment

Matt Houchin is breaking records by wearing a Hard Rock Café T-shirt every day in 2024, all in the name of charity. His Hard Rock Shirt-a-thon is raising money for the nonprofit Free Guitars 4 Kids.

Follow Houchin’s journey

Matt Houchin, wearing a white bathrobe, stands at a table covered in Hard Rock Café T-shirts, ironing one of the shirts.
Harris Forbes ’19 serves as associate producer and postproduction supervisor for America in Black. Produced by CBS News in partnership with BET News, the show airs monthly and covers a range of stories about Black America, from profiles of prominent movers and shakers to deep dives into the Black maternal health crisis and the fight to teach Black history in schools.

Read about Forbes’ work

The words BET News Presents America in Black are displayed on a black background.
Our alumni will travel the world for a scoop. Meet the foreign correspondents, filmmakers and producers who are shining lights on stories from India, Colombia, Israel, Ukraine and elsewhere.

Learn about their work

Josh Lederman stands in a desert landscape in Gaza. He is wearing a blue denim shirt, black pants, and a black bulletproof vest labeled ‘PRESS’ on the front.
If you know Greta Lee ’05, you know she’s a bit of a shapeshifter, with almost 20 years of experience in acting roles that span from the dead serious to the drop-dead hilarious. Last year, the highly praised and Oscar-nominated film Past Lives gave Lee her first leading role — and ushered in a new stage of her career.

Get to know Greta Lee

Greta Lee, bending at the waist, rests her elbows on a puppet theater with her head in the window behind the curtains. The puppet theater’s teal body is adorned with gold details, and Lee is dressed in a dark skirt with white heeled shoes.
Julie Plec showed up at Northwestern in September 1990 with big dreams of a future in Hollywood, inspired by everything she’d ever read in Entertainment Weekly and Premiere magazine. Nothing prepared her for life in entertainment more than “tech week” for student theater productions.

Read Plec’s essay

A black and white illustration of a headshot of Julie Plec smiling.
Sarah Wills Carlsson collaborated with fellow alums to publish the ’ittle Bear children’s book series. The books, which follow a stuffed animal who travels the world, aim to increase cultural education.

Read Carlsson’s essay

Katy Wills, Sarah Wills Carlsson, Jennifer Royall Anderson, Jennifer Burke and Valerie Banks Amster pose in front of a fireplace, smiling with their arms around each other while Anderson and Burke hold copies of ’ittle Bear: The Adventures Begin.

Digital Detox

Fall 2024
Where’s your phone right now? Brandon Kondritz, a junior journalism major, asks listeners that question in his podcast episode “The Day I Ditched My Devices,” which chronicles his day as a Northwestern student — completely unplugged.

See how his digital detox day went

An illustration of a person holding their phone over a trash can in an outdoor setting. The trash is filled with icons representing Likes and Messages.
Tributes to Steve Albini ’85, who died in May, laud the curt and candid punk rocker for his musical production chops. But Zeki Hirsch ’24, one of the last people to interview the musician, remembers Albini’s softer side — as a cook, a cat lover and a brilliant satirist.

Read the remembrance

Steve Albini
Fresh off a 10-show European tour to Paris, London and Florence, Italy, singer Stella Cole shared the story of her viral rise and how Northwestern helped launch her career. Cole, who double majored in theater and international studies and now lives in New York City, will release her debut album in August.

Meet the artist

Stella Cole sings with her eyes closed while holding a microphone. She is onstage in London. She is wearing a black dress.
Growing up, Cristina Henríquez ’99 would regularly visit Panama, her father’s home country, on family trips. Those experiences inform her latest novel, The Great Divide, which follows three characters whose lives intersect during the construction of the Panama Canal.

Read about the novel

A photograph of The Great Divide book, which is angled slightly to the right. The book cover has a primarily red background with geometric green and yellow plants, flowers and frogs scattered around the title and the author’s name.