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Arts & Entertainment

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.

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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.

Evil Eyes Sea

Fall 2024
In this Q&A, Özge Samanci shares the inspiration for her new graphic novel, Evil Eyes Sea, which was published in summer 2024. Inspired in part by Samanci’s real-life experiences, the book examines political corruption, friendships and the threat of the male gaze.

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A mixed media illustration depicts a woman wearing a black long sleeve turtleneck with an evil eye in place of her head and Medusa-like snakes for hair against a blue background resembling water.
Stage adaptations of books, movies and even music albums are nothing new. But this spring Christina Rosales ’11 brought an unusual production to Northwestern’s Wirtz Center Chicago: a stage adaptation of a video game.

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Two characters from the show Dot’s Home Live converse onstage. On the left is Mr. Murphy, a white man wearing a brown suit jacket and tan slacks and holding a black folder. On the left is Dot, a Black woman wearing a red top and white pants, pointing her finger at Mr. Murphy.
A week after filmmaker Gail Gilbert ’81, ’18 MFA brought home her new lab puppy, he suddenly lost the ability to walk. Upon discovering that four other puppies from the litter were similarly affected, Gilbert documented their rehabilitation process in the new documentary, Puppy Love.

Learn more about Puppy Love

A woman poses with her yellow labrador retriever outside a building with a sign that reads, The AKC Museum of the Dog.
Northwestern professor Melissa Foster ’96, ’01 MMus believes rap music should be accessible to everyone. She explains why she finds the genre so inspiring — and why learning its history is critical to becoming a good rapper.

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Michelle Foster leans against a brick wall, wearing a white turtleneck top, oblong hoop earrings and a necklace. She is smiling and holding a copy of her book.

Timeless Threads

Spring 2024
In her senior honors thesis, art history major Elizabeth Dudley explores the influence of technology — from the invention of the sewing machine to the rise of social media — on fashion and aesthetic trends. She focuses on cottagecore, an aesthetic reflecting a pastoral way of life that exploded in popularity during the pandemic.

Learn about cottagecore

Elizabeth Dudley smiles in a forested area wearing a floral crown and an off-shoulder smocked white top with a dark pink spaghetti-strapped dress over it.
When his dreams of directing theater fizzled, Art Johnston ’75 MFA instead took up the fight for queer rights in Chicago. Together with his husband, Pep Peña, he co-founded Sidetrack, an innovative gay bar that’s now the largest in the Midwest, and lobbied for passage of groundbreaking civil rights laws that have made Chicago a welcoming place for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Get to know Johnston

Art Johnston sits on a barstool in Sidetrack. He is smiling and looking slightly away from the camera to his left. Behind him is a neon sign displaying the name Sidetrack.
Maya-Camille Broussard ’04 MA is the owner of the Chicago-based bakery Justice of the Pies and a star on the Netflix show Bake Squad. In this Q&A, she discusses the inspiration behind her pie flavors, the social issues close to her heart and how she’s worked to make her bakery an accessible place for people living with disabilities.

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Maya-Camille Broussard smiles at the camera while holding a strawberry basil key lime pie topped with fresh strawberries, on a serving tray. She wears a black and white polka-dotted dress and stands in front of a white and black polka-dotted wall.