Alumni in the News: March 9, 2026

The reviews are in for these creative Lions! On March 5 The New York Times wrote that Maggie Gyllenhaal ’99’s film The Bride! was “energetic, handsome and stocked with expert, appealing performers”; Night Side Songs, a new musical about illness and mortality by Daniel Lazour ’16 and his brother, Patrick, was called “an intimate and extremely pretty song cycle” in a March 4 write-up; Aya Ogawa ’97’s latest play, Meat Suit, about the messiness of motherhood, was described on Feb. 26 as “raucous, poignant, angry, compassionate and sharply comical”; and Brian Platzer ’05 was commended for his “obvious skill as writer” in a Feb. 20 review of his recent novel, The Optimists.

At an event in West Harlem on March 3, City Council Speaker Julie Jacobs Menin ’89 announced that District 7 Council member Shaun Abreau ’14 had been appointed City Council majority leader. Menin and Abreu spoke about their joint political agenda to advance affordable housing, improve transportation, implement universal child care and lower healthcare costs across New York City. Abreau has served on the Council since 2021.

Patrick Radden Keefe ’99 made a cameo playing himself on the Season 4 finale of Industry on March 1. As a reporter for The New Yorker, Keefe interviews lead character Harper Stern on a private jet. “Keefe made his bones reporting and writing about criminals,” GQ says in its recap. “His métier hinges on how crime — white collar, blue collar, on Belfast streets and in Excel sheets — weaves into contemporary life. You wonder how his piece on Harper is going to read.”

On Feb. 24 it was announced that Sam Melvin ’19 was selected to the USRowing national team, ahead of the World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam this August. Melvin finished fourth in the lightweight single sculls at the 2024 world championships; he will compete this year with the winners of the National Selection Regatta in May, at World Cup II, held June 12–14 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and World Cup III in Lucerne, Switzerland, in late June.

Daniele Sahr ’00 was in conversation with Miller Theatre’s executive director Melissa Smey for a Feb. 24 Q&A for Seen and Heard International, a review site for opera, ballet, theater and other performance. In addition to being a contributor to Seen and Heard International, Sahr is a middle school humanities teacher at Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School.

More Lions in the Times: Brendan Ballou ’09 wrote the Feb. 18 guest essay “One Man Stole $660 Million. He’ll Never Pay It Back,” about fraud committed by fast-food executive Andrew Wiederhorn. Ballou is a former federal prosecutor and the founder of the Public Integrity Project. And Jodi Kantor ’96 wrote the Feb. 2 investigative report “How the Supreme Court Secretly Made Itself Even More Secretive.” Kantor, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018, has been with the Times since 2003.

Jaye Fenderson ’00 was on a panel at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 26, discussing how her 2025 PBS docuseries, The Class (directed and produced with her husband, Adam) turned into a national movement for education equity. Tony- and Grammy-winner Daveed Diggs, an executive producer of the six-part series, was a co-panelist.