Alumni News

Morgan Jerkins MFAW ’16 recently published an essay in Rolling Stone on “What Colin Kaepernick’s National Anthem Protest Tells Us About America.” In it, she argues that “People aren’t merely upset because he is disrespecting the flag; they are upset because [his] anger illuminates just how divided this nation is and has always been.” 

Gesture, a nearly 3000-part installation of small paintings by Manju Shandler ’95, is included in the exhibition “Rendering the Unthinkable: Artists Respond to 9/11” at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Each painting is meant to evoke a particular victim. The show opens on September 12.

Roa Lynn ’60 wrote a piece that appeared in The New Yorker earlier this summer about having lunch with Pablo Neruda in June, 1968, and the poem he wrote for her inspired by that meeting. Lynn links her memory of Neruda to hearing the news of Bobby Kennedy's assassination, and an attempted murder she witnessed from the window of a bus while traveling in Argentina. 

Effy Redman '04 recently published a piece in The New York Times about growing up with Moebius Syndrome, a condition that renders her unable to smile or make most other facial expressions. In the article, Redman meditates on the difficulties she deals with as a person unable to participate in the many-layered and surprisingly vital social mechanism that is a simple smile. 

The Lost Girls, the debut novel of Heather Young MFAW '11, was published this summer by William Morrow. The Lost Girls, while not her first published work, is her first work of fiction.