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Andrew Solomon, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center, has just assumed the presidency of PEN American Center. His most recent book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (2012), won the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction. A previous book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2001 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2002. Solomon has written numerous articles for the The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum and other publications on a wide range of topics…

The work of David Henry Hwang, an associate professor and head of the School of the Arts’ playwrighting concentration, includes the plays M. Butterfly, Chinglish, Golden Child, Yellow Face, The Dance and the Railroad and FOB, as well as the Broadway musicals Aida (co-author), Flower Drum Song (2002 revival) and Disney’s Tarzan.

Associate Professor Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the United States seven years later. He released his debut memoir, Little Failure, in 2014, to much critical acclaim.

Associate Professor Heidi Julavits is the editor, with Sheila Heti and Leanne Shapton, of 2014’s Women in Clothes, a book of essays, photographs and reminiscences about how women feel about their clothing.

Associate Professor Katherine Dieckmann is a film director and screenwriter known for her lyrical, character-driven work. Her feature films A Good Baby (2000) and Diggers (2006) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, while Motherhood (2009) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Sean Solomon, director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, has been leading NASA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury for the last four years. MESSENGER is the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

Within the Columbia Rare Book & Manuscript Library’s trove of publishing industry records is a single index card that notes the delivery of a manuscript by an unpublished author titled Go Set a Watchman. It is the only known record of the first draft of a novel that would become the 1960 blockbuster To Kill A Mockingbird.

Thomas Merton (CC’38, MA’39) was a monk, mystic, best-selling author, poet, civil rights activist and photographer. These facets of his life and more are on display at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library in a show that celebrates the centennial of his birth and showcases Columbia’s collection of his papers and photographs.

Columbia awarded its first Global Freedom of Expression Prizes to courts in Turkey and Zimbabwe and to a U.K.-based legal services organization in recognition of their contributions to free speech and a free press.

Research shows that black-legged ticks are rapidly growing in number, expanding geographically and carrying pathogens that can lead to ailments like Lyme disease and babesiosis into places where they were relatively unknown.

David Freedberg, the Pierre Matisse professor of art history and director of the Italian Academy, was named director of the Warburg Institute of the University of London, beginning in July.