Laura Silver

September 2018. Lisa and E. Gerald O’Brien in front of Douglas Argue’s oil canvas work, Untitled, affectionately known as the “chicken painting.”

Jerry O’Brien was an undergraduate art history major at the University of Michigan when he got some thrilling news from Sotheby’s in New York City. The venerable auction house had awarded him one of its coveted summer internships. In fact, the human resources director told him, two different departments wanted him, and he could have his pick. Elated, O’Brien, who w...

Spring 2018. U Law Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin has worked for peace, held war criminals accountable, and investigated rape as a tool of war. Now, with the U.N., she's protecting human rights in an era of counterterrorism.

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin has spent her career rooting out the worst human rights abuses in some of the most forbidding places on Earth. Yet, here she was on an early winter morning, gracious and unflappable, holding a coffee to go and a small paper bag, the contents of which would have to s...

Fall 2017. Abigail Gewirtz and the ADAPT parenting program bring help to returning military parents and their children.

Why Fred Amram speaks out.

Summer 2017. By Laura Silver. Fred Amram (M.A. ’59) thought he and Alice Musabende couldn’t be less alike. The 83-year-old author, inventor, activist, and professor emeritus of speech communication and creativity at the University of Minnesota often speaks to schoolchildren, military organizations, and civic groups about his experience as a Jewish child in Nazi Germany. When he met Musabende, a young survivor of the Rwandan genocide, she was speaking on the steps of the Capitol in St. Paul. She ...

Fall 2015. By Laura Silver. In her young-adult debut novel, Kathleen Glasgow (M.F.A. '02) has written about a girl much like her younger self.

American Craft December/January 2016. By Laura Silver. Anika Smulovitz brings a scholar’s eye to Judaica. (Photo by Doug Yaple.)

Summer 2014. By Laura Silver. It was on a walk across the Washington Avenue Bridge during her first days as a University of Minnesota student that Mary Relindes Ellis (B.A. ’86) saw 79 wooden steps leading from Washington Avenue down the bluff to the riverbank. The mysterious sight has inspired her second novel, The Bohemian Flats. (Photo by Samantha Bender.)

April 2016. Six articles by Laura Silver.

The Catholic Schools Center of Excellence is a nonprofit organization with a simple two-part mission: to help Catholic elementary schools achieve and maintain excellence while increasing student enrollment.

Spring 2015. By Laura Silver. A new collection of dark, original versions of classic fairy tales has been translated and notated by U of M professor and renowned Grimms scholar Jack Zipes. (Illustration by Patrick Arrasmith.)

Winter 2016. By Laura Silver, Minnesota Army National Guard Major Amber Manke (M.Ed. ’12, Ph.D. ’15), was one of 28 Army officers nationwide to receive the prestigious General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award in 2014. (Photo by Sara Rubinstein.)

Spring 2016. Review by Laura Silver. The Wedding Heard ‘Round the World: America’s First Gay Marriage (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) speaks most pointedly to a young adult audience, but all readers will find an inspirational love story as well a fascinating look back at the early days of the gay rights struggle.

Fall 2015. By Laura Silver. The mostly abandoned Jewish cemeteries of Bohemia and Moravia (in the present-day Czech Republic) are the focus of Still . . . Life (December 19, 2015, through July 10, 2016), a collaborative installation that is a meditation on memory, survival, and rebirth in the face
of horrific intolerance.

Fall 2016. By Laura Silver. Citizen Swain is a behind-the-scenes look at the people and events that have shaped Minnesota, and a testament to the rewards of active citizenship.

Fall 2011. By Laura Silver. Three jewelry artists, all longtime exhibitors at American Craft Council shows, have spent their careers cultivating and honing their craft, yet each retains the passion, exuberance, and spontaneity of a beginner.

Fall 2014. By Laura Silver.
U experts look at a different way to manage the stresses of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis—through cognitive behavioral therapy. (Photo by Jim Bovin.)