For Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Percival Everett, writing novels is an excuse to indulge his avid curiosity. “I often become obsessed with a subject and then realize that a novel is brewing,” he says. “I like discovery and, as I don’t know much, the world is wide open to me. I like being confused.”

That enthusiasm for variety, coupled with his humble approach, has shaped the unusually wide-ranging body of work by this Distinguished Professor of English. He’s written a western, a murder mystery and a children’s book. His novels have featured baseball players, Vietnam veterans, hydrologists and horse trainers. His most recent novel, James — which won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award in 2024 — is a retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Everett is also a jazz guitarist, fly fisher and painter, with an exhibition of his artwork opening in Milan this June.

He and his wife, Danzy Senna, who is also a professor of English at USC Dornsife, were both finalists for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award — Everett for James and Senna for her novel Colored Television. The couple are parents to two teens who are also skilled storytellers, prompting Everett to insist, with characteristic modesty, that he’s “easily the least talented writer in our house.”

Photo: Windham-Campbell Prizes/ John Davis

Enrique Martínez Celaya, the first Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at USC Dornsife, originally trained as a physicist. Today — in true Renaissance style — his work spans painting, sculpture, poetry and fiction.

This fall, Culver City’s Wende Museum will feature his latest work: a sculptural recreation of his childhood home in Cuba, built from sugar. It’s an homage to the country’s staple crop and a nod to impermanence. “I rebuilt it as an act of resistance against time,” says Martínez Celaya. “And by making it out of sugar, I acknowledged the fragility and ultimate futility of that resistance.”

The work is titled The Sextant, after the sailor’s navigational tool. For Martínez Celaya, the home his father built in Cuba has served a similar function: “Over 50 years after leaving our country of origin, the house is still guiding our journey as immigrants, shaping our understanding of our family and ourselves.”

Photo: Kwaku Alston

For novelist Deborah Harkness, professor (teaching) of history, art imitates life — sometimes literally.

Her best-selling All Souls series of historical fantasy novels centers on Diana Bishop, a science historian whose latent magical powers reignite after she discovers an ancient manuscript. The story echoes Harkness’ own experience: A scholar of the history of science and medicine, she was inspired to write fiction after reading a book she chanced upon at the airport in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, that imagined magical creatures living among us.

Soon, Harkness began rising at 5:30 a.m. to write before teaching her classes. Her first novel, A Discovery of Witches, hit The New York Times’ Best Sellers list in 2011. Five more best-selling novels followed, along with a popular television adaptation on which she served as an executive producer.

Harkness now has a large community of devoted fans invested in the adventures of Bishop and her scientist-vampire lover, Matthew Clairmont. The title of her latest installment, The Falcon and the Rose, was announced earlier this year. Imagining what happens next for her characters keeps the ideas flowing.

“As long as the questions keep coming, the books will keep coming,” she recently told Elle magazine.

Photo: Austin Sandhaus

Artist Jessica Taylor Bellamy ’14, who majored in political science, describes her works as capturing “moments of awe and precariousness” — a duality she often finds in her hometown of Los Angeles, where beauty and instability live side by side.

The city feels as if it’s in a permanent state of metamorphosis: Light shifts by the hour. Familiar sites give way to redevelopment. Wildfires reduce neighborhoods to ashes. “Each drive or walk becomes an act of witnessing transformation,” she says.

Signifiers of these shifts — sunsets tinged with smoke, chain-link fences enclosing construction sites, palm trees on fire — appear frequently in her paintings and mixed-media work.

Bellamy is also drawn to the city’s fading memories. She is the recipient of a 2025 Lightning Fund Award from Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions — a grant that will fund her new video series infusing L.A. history with elements of magical realism.

Photo: Chad Unger

Before he became Grammy-nominated musician Aloe Blacc, Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III ’01 majored inlinguistics and psychology at USC Dornsife and communications at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Even then, he saw music as a tool for social change — inspired in part by the civic engagement modeled by USC professors and programs.

Born in Southern California to Panamanian parents, Blacc grew up surrounded by salsa, merengue and calypso. He began writing hip-hop lyrics at age 9, played trumpet in grade school, and formed the underground rap group Emanon before penning the Trojan tailgate favorite “I Love USC” as a student.

After a corporate job layoff, Blacc pursued music full-time. His breakout hits, including “I Need a Dollar” and “The Man,” earned international acclaim. Blacc’s lyrics and vocal performance on “Wake Me Up,” released by the late Swedish producer Avicii, helped the song achieve multiplatinum, chart-topping status.

Today, Blacc continues layering his lyrics with meaning to amplify civic and social engagement. His latest album, Stand Together, was produced in partnership with a philanthropic organization of the same name, with songs spotlighting ordinary people doing good work to uplift their communities.

“I hope it inspires my fellow artists to lend their talents to telling the important stories of real people doing real work to make our world a little bit better,” he says.

Photo: Xach Bell

Since graduating in 2016, photographer and videographer Christopher Scott Carpenter, pictured here at a Holi festival in Uttar Pradesh, India, has crisscrossed the globe capturing humanity’s unique traditions, celebrations and expressions of belief. His lens has documented a Navajo coming-of-age ceremony in the American Southwest, Vodou practitioners in Brooklyn, New York, and costumed revelers at the Venice Carnival in Italy and Día de los Muertos in Mexico City.

Carpenter’s unusual dual degree — cognitive science from USC Dornsife and film and television production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts — provided the ideal foundation for his work. “Cognitive science explores human understanding — how we perceive the world and the narrative or social structures we employ to do so,” he says. “I thought that was an excellent complement to film production.”

The intersection of perception and storytelling inspired his latest project: a photo book documenting the modern religious revival happening across the United States. “In one of my cognitive science classes, we talked about ‘great awakenings,’ religious revivals that often occur around times of great social upheaval,” he explains.

It’s a pursuit with a personal connection for Carpenter, who was raised Mormon — a religion that arose during America’s Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s. His new work extends beyond traditional beliefs. One stop on his tour? A UFO convention.

Photo: Shashank Jayaprasad