Alumni in the News: November 7, 2022

On November 1, The Whiting Foundation announced the nine 2022 recipients of the $40,000 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant; the awardees included Atossa Araxia Abrahamian ’08, JRN’11 and Alejandra Oliva ’15. The grant is awarded to writers who are in the process of completing a nonfiction book; Abrahamian’s work, The Hidden Globe, “investigates the extraterritorial jurisdictions that lie above, between, and beneath nations.” Oliva’s forthcoming book, Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration, is “an urgent reckoning and reexamination of the humanitarian crisis we call the American immigration system.”

Four alumnae were recently featured in The New York Times: Jennifer Lee ’90, GSAS’98 wrote the November 1 op-ed “Asian American Students Face Bias, but It’s Not What You Might Think”; Morgan Parker ’10 is the author of the October 20 T Book Club feature “How Toni Morrison Wrote Her Most Challenging Novel”; on October 19, Patricia Howard ’13 was the subject of “How ‘a Perfectionist on a Budget’ Decorated Her Buzzy New Restaurant,” describing the interior of Howard’s hip new eatery Lord’s; and Helena Andrews-Dyer ’02 was included in the October 12 op-ed “In Defense of the Mom Group”; Andrews-Dyer is the author of The Mamas: What I Learned About Kids, Class and Race From Moms Not Like Me.

Neuroscientist Leslie Vosshall ’87 was a guest on the October 22 NPR program “It’s not your imagination. Research says some people are more attractive to mosquitos.” Vosshall is VP and chief scientific officer at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

On October 12, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) announced Joanne Kwong ’97’s appointment to a commission to study the potential creation of a National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture. The commission is made up of eight members with various expertise in museum planning or Asian Pacific American history and culture.

Leeza Mangaldas ’11 appears on the digital cover of Cosmopolitan India’s September/October 2022 issue. Mangaldas, a sexual health editor, wrote an article about self-knowledge and pleasure.