Ravenna Koenig
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A group of NOLA music lovers has created "A Closer Walk," an interactive map of landmarks like the birthplace of jazz, a recording studio-turned-laundromat and the home of a legendary cornetist.
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When Mary Matsuda Gruenewald was a high school junior, her family was sent to a Japanese internment camp. Now, she was finally able to participate in her hometown's high school graduation.
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On her eponymous debut album as Bedouine, folk musician Azniv Korkejian explores her itinerant, transnational upbringing and the war in Syria, where she was born.
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Jason Haaheim was a senior scientist at a nanotech company before deciding he wanted to play in a professional orchestra. He's now principal timpanist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
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For her new album, Simone Schmidt, who performs under the name Fiver, researched the stories of women committed to the 19th-century Ontario institution for the criminally insane.
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That message is embedded in the Canadian singer's new album, Pleasure. "I appreciate the perspective that 28-year-old Leslie's shed on my life," she says. "I kind of want to echo that forward."
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The Glee star was cast in Les Misérables when she was 8 and has been performing ever since. She says her new album, Places, intentionally calls back to her history onstage.
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Mecklenburg County, N.C., is a blue spot in a red state. And a visit there reveals something national polls may leave unsaid: Many black voters are dissatisfied with their choices for president.
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Starting that next chapter can be difficult in any young person's life. And YA writers know it well. Sandra Cisneros, Jacqueline Woodson, Tamora Pierce and Jason Reynolds offer some words of wisdom.
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Before her first book, Naomi Novik was a programmer who wrote Napoleonic-era fan fiction on the side. Then she had an idea: "What could make the Napoleonic wars more exciting? Dragons!"