“Going to Spring Sing should be on every UCLA alum’s bucket list,” says VICKI GLEMBOCKI, who for this issue has penned a valentine to the iconic Bruin tradition [“Sing a Song of Westwood”]. A former contributing editor at Reader’s Digest, she has written for a wide variety of magazines, including Playboy, More, Women’s Health and Ladies’ Home Journal, and she is also the author of The Second Nine Months, a memoir about her initial foray into motherhood. A veteran theatrical performer herself, Glembocki says that “though I’m known to sing a mean ‘Bobby Magee’ on karaoke, there is no way on earth that I could have ever won Spring Sing.”
“The reversal of Roe v. Wade has felt like an enormous threat — and extremely destabilizing and scary to women like me,” says collage artist and illustrator JOHANNA GOODMAN. Of her artwork for the story on the UCLA School of Law’s new Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy [“A Call to Action, Answered”] she says, “My intention was to capture empowerment — to illustrate the action UCLA intends to take to help support women and to aggressively protect reproductive freedom.” The New York-based artist’s work has previously appeared in UCLA Magazine and a host of other publications, including West Elm, Time and Le Monde, as well as in books and museums.
Veteran public affairs journalist ASHRAF KHALIL, the author of Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation, an account of the Arab Spring, says he learned a lot in researching this issue’s cover story on the UCLA Activist-in-Residence Program [“The Justice League”]. “It was eye-opening to explore the depth of UCLA’s commitment to training a new generation of activists and change agents,” he says. “University campuses are often hotbeds of political and social activism, but the Activist-in-Residence program really struck me for its dedication to marrying that activism with real-world experiences from working activists who have made this their full-time vocation.” Khalil’s work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Economist, Town and Country, Foreign Policy and Rolling Stone.
A longtime contributor to UCLA Magazine, DIANA KOENIGSBERG was delighted to photograph — and eat — the delectable dishes of UCLA Executive Chef Joey Martin for our stories on a smorgasbord of campus food. She captured preparations from the student dining hall, Bruin Plate [“Food for Thought”], and a walk-through of the UCLA Teaching Kitchen’s Culinary Bootcamp [“A Different Kind of Course Work”]. This assignment gave Koenigsberg a front-row seat to witnessing the tremendous energy and thought that go into feeding Bruins. She says watching Chef Joey make the green shakshuka recipe was a highlight, as was sampling it: “It tasted incredible!” Koenigsberg’s work has appeared in publications such as InStyle, People and House Beautiful, and her photography and video clients have included PETA, Target and Hewlett Packard.
OSCAR MAGALLANES ’17 is a Chicano artist whose work is rooted in the pursuit of social justice, so providing the visuals for our story on the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs’ Activist-in-Residence Program [“The Justice League”] was a natural fit. The L.A. native says he was inspired by how the program “provides a platform for community leaders and organizers to bring their expertise and lived experiences into the academic setting.” While earning an art degree from UCLA, Magallanes co-founded the 3B Collective, which has created murals for UCLA, UC San Diego — from which he received his M.F.A. — and the Children’s Museum in Oaxaca, Mexico. As a solo artist, Magallanes has exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world. And hawk-eyed readers may recall his stunning design for the cover of our January 2019 issue.
A former managing editor of the urban affairs magazine Next City, JANINE WHITE has interviewed artists and activists, mayors and CEOs, often writing about how urban policy solutions and health care intersect with social justice. So she was a natural choice to delve into the journey of the groundbreaking film We’re Alive, about incarcerated women in the 1970s, and the plucky student filmmakers who produced it. “I hope people walk away from the story [“The Second Life of We’re Alive”] wanting to seek out a viewing of We’re Alive,” she says, “so they can hear firsthand the stories of incarcerated women and their keen insights into criminal justice reform.”
Read more from UCLA Magazine’s Spring 2023 issue.
