The Robertson scholars leadership program was founded by the late philanthropist and Carolina alumnus Julian Robertson ’55 as a way of providing eight semesters of full tuition, room and board to scholars at both Carolina and Duke University.

“The scholarship is all about investing in young leaders to create change,” said Torrey Lin Weiner, a sophomore Robertson scholar double-majoring in journalism and philosophy. “It elevates us by keeping us in touch with a higher level of community with more intention.”

The scholars also build a community among themselves during a multitude of events and learning opportunities. The trip to the Ackland in October was one example.

Lin Weiner is not an artist but attended to gain a better understanding of the man behind the collection.

“It’s interesting getting to see this collection and develop more of an understanding of who Robertson might have been,” Lin Weiner said. “You can see the intentionality in what he collected. It was cool to draw connections between the pieces as we went through the session.”

The session was led by Elizabeth Manekin, the Ackland’s head of university programs and academic projects.

Her session looked at several different pieces of the collection, including the sculpture by American artist George Rickey, titled “U.N. III.” She said the piece left a special impression on the scholars.

(Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

“They were immediately taken by the sense of movement in the piece,” Manekin said. “The way it’s displayed doesn’t allow for its intended motion. But the students immediately understood that potential energy and after watching a video of it moving, they were even more mesmerized.”

Manekin praised the Robertson scholars for their thoughtful, engaged responses. She credits this to their standing as an interdisciplinary group who can bring their own passions into their understanding of the pieces.

“One student in the session was a biology major, and she was looking at the Rickey piece as a double helix,” Manekin said. “There was also a computer science major who related the piece to code and manipulation.”

For Lin Weiner, the experience at the Ackland was an inspiring one.

“I think the reason I’m a Robertson scholar is because I’m passionate about people and their stories,” Lin Weiner said. “Through the Ackland, I was able to get an understanding of the stories behind the paintings and the people behind the collection.”

“Color Triumphant” will be on display at the Ackland until Jan. 4.

As he finished a mastering session for rap supergroup Public Enemy’s “Apocalypse 91 … The Enemy Strikes Back” album, Young turned the studio into a classroom, seamlessly explaining the how and why of what he was doing.

More than three decades later, Young is still offering music production lessons. He just finished his first semester as a full-time faculty member in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences’ music department, teaching two sections of MUSC 156: Beat Making Lab as well as MUSC 212, a one-credit-hour class for students participating in the UNC Hip-Hop Ensemble.

Both courses are natural fits for Young. He said his students’ enthusiasm is what stands out the most from the semester. “They’re excited about making beats,” Young said, “and they rise to the occasion and get it done.”

The same can be said about Young in a career characterized by longevity and variety.

Born and raised in Queens, New York, he was a saxophonist in his youth and began DJing in the late 1980s, working at a popular Long Island nightclub as a teenager. Around the same time, Young started hanging out in the studio with Public Enemy and by the summer of 1989 was producing for the Bomb Squad, the group’s in-house production team.

His beats are on multiple Public Enemy projects, and he also produced solo projects by group members Chuck D (a childhood neighbor), Professor Griff and Flavor Flav. Young has worked with legendary acts like Ice Cube, Busta Rhymes, Eric B. & Rakim and Mobb Deep among others. Several movies, including “Sister Act 2 (Back in the Habit)” and Spike Lee’s “He Got Game,” feature his beats, too.

“I worked with everybody,” Young said.

Displeased with the commercialization of rap and changes in lyrical content, Young decided to focus more on music composition in 1994 after working as a composer on the first season of the TV series “New York Undercover.”

“I didn’t get into it for the money. I just love making music,” he said. “Once I started composing, I was like, ‘Man, I want to do more of this.’”

That desire led Young to the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music composition. He’s composed several orchestral works and created the world’s first hip-hop concerto, “The Five Elements,” in 2024.

Young also serves as a hip-hop ambassador for Next Level, a U.S. Department of State program run in association with the UNC-Chapel Hill music department that took him to Egypt in 2017 and will send him to Italy next year.

Young directs the UNC Hip-Hop Ensemble Fall Concert at Hill Hall on Nov. 11, 2025. (Johnny Andrews/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Inside the classroom

Young teaches students the fundamentals and history of the craft and encourages them to really listen to songs. “Isolate what’s going on, and figure out what sounds are being used,” he said. “Is there a hi-hat? Or what’s keeping the pulse?”

He also challenges students with in-class beat assignments on computer software Ableton. Their creations range from hip-hop and R&B to techno and house music.

Web Allen, a junior business administration major, enjoys the “hands-on” nature of the course. Allen, who sings and beatboxes in a cappella group Psalm 100, also appreciated that Young came to hear his group perform.

“I was like, ‘Heck yeah, thank you!’” Allen said. “It was fun having him.”

Young had a great semester, but he said teaching — like beat making — is trial and error.

“You have to see what sticks and what works,” he said.

“They’re excited about making beats,” Young said about his students, “and they rise to the occasion and get it done.” (Johnny Andrews/UNC-Chapel Hill)

The production highlights nine female teens on a soccer team and the challenges that arise when navigating soccer drills, secrets and ambitions.

Pinto became involved in the production through Shelley Johnson ’06 (MA), a former Carolina assistant athletics director. Johnson reached out to Pinto about the cast needing a crash course on soccer fundamentals before the production.

Pinto left Carolina in May 2021 to start her professional soccer career in the National Women’s Soccer League with Gotham FC, finishing her classes and graduating in 2022. Now she’s in Cary playing for the North Carolina Courage, only 30 minutes from her hometown of Durham.

“I love the University. Working with UNC is really inspiring to me because it’s given so much to me and created some of the best opportunities in my life,” said Pinto. “I hope to now give back to the University for other students.”

After a road game, she went straight from the airport to Hooker Fields, where she met eight cast members and three understudies for the first cast meeting.

The cast needed to learn how to play soccer while also looking like natural, experienced players. Some cast members had never kicked a soccer ball before and didn’t want that to overshadow the performance or dialogue.

“We wanted the cast to have fun, begin the team-building process, level up their soccer skills and provide them with a few small wins in the skill-building department,” said Johnson. “This was not your typical first day of rehearsal. We wanted something memorable for the cast to set the tone for the work to be done and the overall experience.”

With Pinto, cast members went through a standard dynamic warmup then focused on agility skills, ball control exercises, wall passing, traveling, dribbling, throw-ins and juggling.

“The cast was super interactive and paid attention to details. It was really fascinating to see them super committed to learning each component that day,” said Pinto. “There are not many situations where I have to give instructions like a coach, but this was a little bit different because I was explaining every small detail of the skills they were learning and taught them by doing the motions. They were committed to fully embodying that role or player from not only the physical standpoint but also the mental standpoint.”

After the boot camp, the cast trained for 30 minutes every day during rehearsals, conducting a soccer style warmup, ball control and agility exercises, along with practicing specific passing drills that the script required. During the run of show, the cast warmed up athletically and theatrically.

Pinto says the experience helped her understand the arts’ cultural aspects along with the detail and why little movements matter. It brought her back to a drama course she took in 2020, when she also went to her first PlayMakers show.

“It’s cool how much variety they have in the PlayMakers plays. The fact that they’re doing something in sports is also unique,” said Pinto. “It’s a credit to the actors. They’re doing complex movements within a tight space on turf on stage. Being able to control the ball after one crash course and look like a real soccer player in a tight space is impressive.”

Katz, who is also the founding director of the Next Level Cultural Diplomacy Program, uses the power of music in this new project to support the rehabilitation of incarcerated individuals across North Carolina.

Developed in close collaboration with the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, as well as currently and formerly incarcerated people, CPMI offers music instruction, performance opportunities and training in music-related skills. The program not only fosters creative expression and pro-social behavior within correctional facilities, but it also works to equip participants with valuable skills to support successful re-entry into society.

The program’s full launch begins this fall with two courses, Introduction to Music and Songwriting, which will culminate in public performances.

Re-entry activities will include career coaching to develop entrepreneurial and networking skills, provide access to recording studios and craft individualized action plans for participants. Guest artists and speakers will supplement rehabilitative and re-entry activities.

CPMI stands out for its bold, collaborative approach, bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders, including prison staff, volunteers, musicians, faith leaders and members of the Carolina community. With its emphasis on dignity, creativity and equal partnership, CPMI aims to humanize and empower prison-impacted individuals, while also promoting social cohesion, lowering recidivism rates and improving public safety and understanding.

“The North Carolina Department of Adult Correction is committed to developing and offering a wide array of rehabilitative opportunities for those incarcerated in our state, and we are excited and grateful to partner with the Carolina Prison Music Initiative to open doors to the transformative power of music within our institutions,” said Charles Mautz, NCDAC director of rehabilitation services.

Katz’s award recognizes not only the academic excellence of the proposal but also its real-world impact and potential to transform lives across the state.

“Through CPMI, we aim to connect the resources of UNC with the creativity and resilience of people impacted by incarceration,” Katz said. “Receiving the Harvey Award affirms the importance of this work and the value of building bridges between the University and the community.”

Proposals for the 2026 Harvey Award are due by Jan.12, 2026, and may be submitted via the Carolina Center for Public Service application portal.

C. Felix Harvey III ’43 and his family endowed the C. Felix Harvey Award to Advance Institutional Priorities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In creating this award, the family fulfilled its longstanding mission of social service and intended to recognize exemplary faculty who reflect the University’s commitment to innovative engagement and outreach for the benefit of communities on a local and statewide level.

The family gift has been groundbreaking from its inception, funding projects in the humanities and social sciences that take exemplary faculty scholarship and move it out into the community to address real-world challenges. The award takes a model of scholarly engagement and outreach that is familiar in business and science and extends it to disciplines that have not been encouraged to grow or reach out in the same ways. Central to the family’s mission is support for the University’s commitment to entrepreneurship and innovation.

Tillet is a contributing critic at large at The New York Times and a distinguished professor of Africana studies and creative writing at Rutgers University-Newark. She is the author of multiple books (including “Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination” and “In Search of ‘The Color Purple’: The Story of an American Masterpiece”) and is completing the book, “All The Rage: Nina Simone and the World She Made.”

In 2003, she and her sister, Scheherazade Tillet, founded A Long Walk Home, an arts organization that empowers young people to end violence against girls and women.

Tillet received the 2025 Emerson Collective Fellowship for leaders taking on a hyperlocal project to help their community come together and solve complex problems and is the 2025 recipient of The Gordan Parks Foundation’s Genevieve Young Fellowship in Writing.

Her writing has also appeared in Aperture, The Atlantic, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, The Nation, The New York Review of Books and Time. Her work has been supported by the Carnegie Foundation, the Lindback Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the Schomburg Center for Scholars-in-Residence, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars and the Mellon Foundation.

Tillet also received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She has Master of Arts in English and teaching in English from Brown University, and a doctorate in American studies from Harvard University. She holds an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Moore College of Art and Design.

“The Sonja Haynes Stone Memorial Lecture stands as a living tribute to Dr. Stone’s visionary legacy — as a scholar, teacher, and community builder who understood that knowledge and the arts are engines of liberation,” said LeRhonda Manigault-Bryant, director of the Stone Center. “Since 1994, this annual gathering has invited students, faculty and our broader community to think critically, act boldly, and honor the transformative power of education that Dr. Stone so passionately championed.”

Interested members of the campus community should RSVP for the event.

One message says, “You’ll always be mine.”

No, this isn’t the beginning of a campfire story you might hear on Halloween. It’s a description of one of the Ackland Art Museum’s latest pieces of artwork on display, “Soft Night, Watching,” from Miami-based artist Jen Clay.

From now until July 12, Ackland visitors can experience this interactive, quilted piece, which Clay says was inspired by her love of science fiction and her affinity for the ambience of Mountain View, North Carolina, where she was born.

“Growing up in the woods, it just feels like there’s less people around,” Clay said. “I felt like if I heard something in the woods it felt like it was more likely to be a creature or an alien than a human being.”

Her fascination with the strange and unusual led her to find comfort in movies like “Ghostbusters,” television shows like “Tales from the Crypt” and short stories such as H.P. Lovecraft’s “Color Out of Space” and Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows.” Both stories are available for visitors to read when viewing “Soft Night, Watching.”

“Color Out of Space” tells the story of a family farm that becomes corrupted and mutated after a meteorite crashes, while “The Willows” describes a canoe trip by two friends who find themselves surrounded by a supernatural, living forest. Both stories were major inspirations for Clay.

The piece features text sewn into the fabric that is meant to both comfort and disturb. (Photo courtesy of Alex Maness)

“Both stories deal with what the environment is doing to your sanity and to your mental health,” Clay said. “I think exploring that is a big foundation of my work.”

Before 2020, Clay’s art primarily consisted of immersive installations, costume design for stage productions and small animated pieces. During the pandemic, she pivoted to sensory-inclusive textile art, which invites people to touch her pieces and discover hidden messages like the ones embedded in “Soft Night, Watching.”

Lauren Turner, the Ackland’s associate curator for contemporary art and special projects, commissioned the piece after being introduced to Clay’s earlier work. Turner got a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of “Soft Night, Watching,” which took place over just three months, from May to August of this year.

“I’m ecstatic to have touchable artwork at the Ackland,” Turner said. “On opening day, I watched two parents tell their children that they should not touch Jen’s piece. It was a career highlight to be able to let them know that, yes, at least in this space, gentle touch is encouraged.”

“I want people to feel comfortable being a little uncomfortable,” Clay said. “To feel happy but eerie at the same time, I love those two opposing feelings.” (Photo courtesy of Alex Maness)

The gentleness at the heart of the monstrous is what inspired Clay to create her pieces. She says that’s why she uses soft, soothing fabrics to construct something that might otherwise make people uncomfortable.

“I want people to feel comfortable being a little uncomfortable,” Clay said. “To feel happy but eerie at the same time, I love those two opposing feelings.”

“Much of horror is concerned with fears of the unknown, and Jen’s work uses unfamiliar forms as a metaphor for a person’s internal struggles with mental health,” Turner said. “Even though aspects of the piece are nightmarish, Jen’s welcoming textures and vibrant palette choices are a beautiful reminder that even in those critical moments when people don’t entirely recognize themselves, they still deserve attention, comfort and grace.”

They were rehearsing a fight scene for the movie “Gangs of New York.” Kelly didn’t want to hurt Neeson’s injured shoulder, but the prop’s floppy rubber blade altered the stuntman’s swing. So Kelly changed his grip and popped Neeson with the mock, yet convincing, blow for which he was hired.

That anecdote begins Kelly’s memoir “A Different Take,” which details how he balanced two careers — stuntman for 25 years and journalist for 30.

Born in Washington, D.C., Kelly spent his childhood rushing between school, auditions and acting gigs in shows and commercials for toys and Wonder Bread. As a teenager, he became serious about basketball.

Noting Carolina’s hoops success, he decided that he must go there and play for coach Dean Smith. He made the junior varsity squad his first year and planned to practice over the summer to earn a spot on the varsity squad his sophomore year.

Instead, Kelly’s mother enrolled him in Carolina’s study abroad program in London. The experience changed his life.

UNC English professor Christopher Armitage took the class to The Old Vic for a performance of Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land,” starring renowned actors John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. The class sat seven rows from the stage.

“It hit places in my soul. I understood that visit to The Old Vic, even then, better than everyone,” said Kelly, a drama major. “It distracted me completely from my focus of basketball.”  It was a revelation, he wrote: “There’s Coach Smith, but there’s also Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson.”

Sean Kelly (right) with Daniel Day Lewis in Martin Scorsese’s ‘Gangs of New York’. (Submitted photo)

“UNC, from the start, was like walking through a door to the world,” Kelly said. “Studying Shakespeare in England opened my eyes to what was to come. It changed my life completely for the better. UNC made you thirst for many aspirations and made you believe they were achievable.”

At Carolina, Kelly spent two years on the junior varsity squad and became one of Smith’s trusted team statisticians. He also deepened his acting skills, built sets and learned staging, lighting and performance. Creative writing and English professors encouraged Kelly to hone his writing.

The Washington Post hired Kelly as an editorial aide in 1980. Under future managing editor Bob Kaiser, he helped reporters cover the Pentagon, the White House, education and breaking news. Kelly also had freelance stories published in most sections of the paper.

“I walked into a job where the world fell into your lap every day,” Kelly said.

Seeking extra income, Kelly signed with a local talent agency. He got a small role in 1984’s “George Washington” miniseries. Next, he drove cars fast in “Protocol,” starring Goldie Hawn.

His stunt career had begun.

For the next 25 years, Kelly executed stunts in commercials, TV and movies. He crashed cars, fell from as high as 50 feet, escaped death in a glacier’s crevasse and almost drowned in swampy mud near a 9-foot alligator.

High points include catching supermodel Paulina Porizkova (“Her Alibi”), fighting Jack Nicholson (“Hoffa”) and doubling for him in “The Departed,” and being flattened by Bruce Willis (“12 Monkeys”). He worked with Daniel Day-Lewis, Holly Hunter, Angelina Jolie, Ving Rhames, Julia Roberts, Tom Selleck and many other actors as well as directors Barry Levinson, Martin Scorsese and John Waters.

Kelly’s credits include TV’s “Rescue 911” for seven years, “Homicide: Life on the Street” and HBO’s “The Wire.” His last stunt gig was as a taxi driver in 2016’s “Ghostbusters.”

All the while, he reared three daughters — Brigid Kelly Waters ’18, Clara Kelly Page and Courtney Kelly ’13 — with his wife, Cathy.

Sean Kelly ’79 with two of his daughters Brigid ’18 (left) and Clara (right) at a Carolina men’s basketball game. (Submitted photo)

His project, titled “From Narrative to Practice: How Film Representations Shape Psychiatric Care Delivery,” examined two films separated by more than 50 years of cinema history. The first was the 1920 silent horror film “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”; the second was 1975’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

“With earlier films like ‘Caligari,’ it was about capturing sensationalism since psychiatric care was a relatively new field,” Kollath said. “It’s an old horror movie, so there were a lot of straitjackets and padded cells, that sort of thing.”

He contrasted that early image with the more complex picture painted in “Cuckoo’s Nest.” Kollath said the movie’s empathetic portrayal of patients, combined with its massive popularity, allowed audiences to view people with mental illnesses in a new light.

“It’s a film where we see people with mental disorders not as merely caricatures but people with wants or needs,” he said. “Of course, being a 50-year-old film, there are certain elements that have aged, but the movie is about these characters breaking free from the shackles of what society perceives them to be, and there are moments where we see them going on adventures and finding themselves.”

Kollath’s love of movies stretches back to his childhood, but one moment in high school changed the way he thought about them. Watching “Donnie Darko,” he realized that film could be more than an escape — it could carry psychological weight and tell stories that linger long after the credits.

“There can actually be real story told,” he said. “I like it a lot because that’s a real psychological movie that got under my skin.”

Carolina gave Kollath the opportunity to learn more about medicine. During his first year, he worked in a psychology-neuroscience lab, where his coursework often reminded him of the films that had shaped his imagination. Slowly, the two threads of his life began to weave together.

With guidance from Dorothea Heitsch, a teaching professor in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences’ Romance studies department who served as his faculty adviser, Kollath sharpened his focus. The collaboration, he said, pushed him to think about medicine in a more human way.

“I think a lot of people in the medical field can tend to treat people like a number,” Kollath said. “That’s why mixing the humanities and medicine is so vital. You can relate to the patient’s cultural understanding of certain things thanks to things like film and television.”

Looking ahead, Kollath hopes to expand his research during his time at Carolina. For him, the intersection of psychiatry and film is a field rich with unanswered questions and unexplored possibilities.

“With film, what you have is a persuasive vehicle for delivering a message,” he said. “And I think that’s a powerful thing that can shape public opinion and broaden understanding.”

As UNC-Chapel Hill celebrates University Research Week, read more about Carolina’s research impact.

It was a tangible problem, something you could see and feel. Today, Mahendru, who is pursuing a doctorate in English and comparative literature with an interest in environmental humanities, is working on a far more invisible problem closer to her Carolina home.

PFAS is the abbreviation for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are found in a variety of consumer products including nonstick cookware, fast-food containers, microwave popcorn bags, water-repellant clothing and firefighting foam. These human-created substances are often called “forever chemicals” and “legacy pollutants” because they are extremely difficult to break down over time and can be present in water, soil, air and food.

“The forever nature of PFAS is really scary. It’s nebulous. It’s everywhere,” Mahendru said.

Peer-reviewed studies have shown that high levels of PFAS exposure may lead to negative health effects, including increased risk for certain cancers, fertility issues and developmental delays, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. UNC-Chapel Hill is a leader in studying how to mitigate the impact of PFAS in North Carolina, with researchers from chemistry to public health working on the issue.

But Mahendru is part of a team of scholars, led by English faculty members Jordynn Jack and Courtney Rivard, who are examining the effects of PFAS exposure on people’s lives via a humanities lens. The team is gathering oral histories from residents in Pittsboro, North Carolina — Chapel Hill’s southern neighbor — where PFAS has been identified in some drinking water.

Creating a story archive

The duo realized the value of joining strengths through their respective English research labs — Jack co-directs the Health and Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Venue for Exploration Lab, also known as the HHIVE Lab, and Rivard directs the Digital Literacy and Communications Lab or DLC Lab.

Their resulting project is  Forever Chemicals: A Story Archive in North Carolina, where they will develop a digital platform for sharing stories and valuable resources for people living with PFAS exposure. In the pilot phase of the project, the team has conducted and transcribed five oral histories, with a goal of gathering 15-20 interviews before creating a public-facing website.

The oral histories are being stored in University Libraries’ Carolina Digital Repository and will eventually become part of the  Southern Oral History Program. SOHP’s unofficial motto is “You don’t have to be famous for your life to be history.”

What can humanistic research methods bring to this multifaceted problem?

“We’re really interested in hearing how people are making sense of this complicated issue through community-engaged research,” Rivard said. “Humanities also sits with that complexity instead of trying to get away from it or simplify it.”

Jack said that the Forever Chemicals team is also exploring how people are digesting information about PFAS contamination and its impacts on their health.

“We are using our knowledge as scholars who study language and who are comfortable dwelling in the in-between to examine how people are relating to the scientific information they are receiving,” Jack said. “Many of our sources have been tested and are aware of their PFAS blood levels, but they are trying to understand that in the context of their lives.”

Even though environmental issues are global concerns, Mahendru said, this local project also has a special role. “Our environment connects us all. But being immersed in a local community is important to help make sense of that larger narrative.”

Read more about the Forever Chemicals project. 

“The New Economy,” written by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, has been named a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. Calvocoressi is an associate professor in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences’ English and comparative literature department, where’s she’s part of the creative writing program.

The shortlist for the National Book Awards for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature and young people’s literature was announced Oct. 7. The five finalists in each category were selected by a distinguished panel of judges and advanced from the long list announced in September.

Told through the point of view of an ungendered body as it ages, “The New Economy” explores childhood memories, great loss and the desire to accept and protect one’s own body as is, while simultaneously yearning to have been born in another.

“I’m just so excited and moved by this whole process,” Calvocoressi said. “It’s like I often tell my students: Poetry is a practice, and life in art is a practice. This is something I’ve worked on for so long, and also it feels brand new as it makes its way in the world.”

The winners of the National Book Awards will be announced Nov. 19 at the 76th National Book Awards Ceremony in New York. Publishers submitted a total of 1,835 books for this year’s awards: 434 in fiction, 652 in nonfiction, 285 in poetry, 139 in translated literature and 325 in young people’s literature.

In addition to “The New Economy,” Calvocoressi has written three other acclaimed poetry collections: “Rocket Fantastic,” “Apocalyptic Swing” and “The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart.”

“What Gaby has achieved through receiving this kind of recognition is rare and lasting,” said Daniel Wallace, the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English and director of the creative writing program. “It means she is among the best and most important poets at work in America today. We at UNC have always known that, of course; now everybody else does. We are all so happy.”

Calvocoressi’s work is currently featured on the cover of The American Poetry Review. Their poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals, including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an editor at large at Los Angeles Review of Books and poetry editor at Southern Cultures.

“The New Economy” was published in October 2025 by Copper Canyon Press.

Learn more about the National Book Award finalists.