Jesmyn Ward September 12, 2025
On Friday, September 12, Hopkins welcomed acclaimed author Jesmyn Ward to campus as part of the School’s Visiting Writer Series. Ward, a two-time National Book Award winner and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, spent the day engaging with the Hopkins community. Ward read and spoke at an all-school assembly, led breakout discussions with students and faculty, and concluded with a public evening reading in the Academic and Performing Arts Center.
Ward is the first woman and the first Black American novelist to win the National Book Award for Fiction twice—for Salvage the Bones (2011) and Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017). Praised for her fearless lyricism, Ward’s work explores themes of race, family, grief, and resilience in coastal Mississippi. She is also the author of the memoir Men We Reaped and the nonfiction book Navigate Your Stars.
In preparation for her visit, students in grades 10–12 read Sing, Unburied, Sing as part of their summer reading assignment, while students in grades 7–9 studied Navigate Your Stars in English class. Faculty and staff also joined in by reading her work ahead of the event.
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Laurie Santos October 17, 2025
When addressing the Hopkins community on the science of happiness, psychologist Dr. Laurie Santos did not begin by talking about positive emotions, but rather how to engage with the negative ones.
On Friday, October 17, the Hopkins community held on to every word as Santos explained the importance of normalizing negative emotions and introducing mindfulness practices to process negative feelings in healthy ways. According to her research in positive psychology, the behavioral change of accepting negative emotions leads to a happier and more fulfilling life.
“I think particularly for the young people in the room, it’s worth acknowledging how normal it is to feel overwhelmed at a high-performance school like Hopkins, where you have a lot on your plate,” Santos said at the beginning of her presentation. “So what’s our move?”
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Andy HuszarNovember 7, 2025At an all-school assembly on Friday, November 7, the Hopkins community welcomed Fall Fellow Andy Huszar ’91, co-founder and CEO of
Marcella, a global designer fashion brand empowering women and girls through its design philosophy, production approach, sustainability, and social impact.
Huszar began by sharing a humorous ninth-grade memory—the time he dressed as Superman with underwear over his tights to promote the Hopkins Canned Food Drive—from the very same podium where he now stood. The story set the stage for two lessons that have shaped every step of his career.
The first, he said, was “fearless curiosity,” which he says began to take shape at Hopkins.
As he noted in his speech, there were moments during his time on the Hill when, despite his best efforts, Huszar didn’t know all the answers—and learning that this was “okay” became a turning point. Being “humbled” here meant he was never afraid to say he didn’t know something, which in turn, as he put it, “freed me to try new things over and over again.”
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