Arts & Entertainment
A generous gift from University Trustee Peter Barris ’74 and Adrienne Barris will establish two endowed scholarships for undergraduates in Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music and McCormick School of Engineering. The Gus and Diane Chagares Music Scholarship will help the Bienen School attract top student musicians.
It’s not every day that a playwright gets to see their words brought to life by talented performers onstage. It’s even more unusual when that playwright turns out to be an ordinary 7-year-old.
Donna Washington ’90 is a storyteller based in Durham, North Carolina whose original stories and folk takes inspire community and connection. She chooses stories specifically for different aged young audiences, tackling topics like anti-racism, red-flag relationships and how to understand the construction of a story.
Writer and scholar Lauren Michele Jackson often gets her best ideas when she ventures outside academia. For the assistant professor of English, staying receptive to a variety of art forms sparks inspiration and ideation.
Kate Zambreno ’99 considers herself a late bloomer. She began her career as a journalist with Chicago alt-weeklies before delving into more experimental fiction, pushing the boundaries of traditional forms. “Much of my writing goes past fact into the realm of fiction,” says Zambreno. The author of eight books, she is now nationally recognized for writing that “troubles genre,” as she puts it.
Nancy Johnson ’93 worked for more than a decade as an award-winning television reporter for CBS and ABC affiliates before moving into corporate communications and public relations. “Still,” she says, “I always wanted to tell the stories of my own imagination, particularly those about the Black experience in America.” Johnson has accomplished just that in her debut novel, The Kindest Lie, named one of the most anticipated books of 2021 by Newsweek; O, The Oprah Magazine; and Elle. Set in 2008, on the cusp of President Barack Obama’s first year in office, the novel follows the story of Ruth Tuttle, a successful Black engineer who begins to search for the long-lost child she left behind when Ruth was only a teenager.
If you’re a fan of John Legend’s hit song “Conversations in the Dark,” you’re already a fan of Kellen “Pom Pom” Pomeranz too. A songwriter and producer based in New York City, Pomeranz has worked on some of today’s most popular songs, such as “Novocaine” by the Unlikely Candidates, which topped Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart for 33 weeks.
Ismael Lara Jr. grew up in southeast Texas, in the small town of Palacios, halfway between Galveston and Corpus Christi. He fell in love with theater and the arts in high school, but telling stories was not just a hobby.
Author Jennifer Mathieu ’98 trained at Northwestern as a journalist. After transitioning her career to teaching and learning from her students, she began writing Young Adult (YA) fiction and making a name for herself as an author with a keen sense of her audience and the stories they care about.
Interest in computer science has skyrocketed over the past few years, fueled by a surge of available data, enhanced computing power and advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Launched by the McCormick School of Engineering and supported by visionary philanthropists, the Computer Science Transformation Initiative is revolutionizing learning across disciplines at Northwestern.
