Katie Jane Villanueva

it starts with a star. 

She feels an unsettling rumbling in her chest before she feels the tremor beneath her feet. She opens her face to the sky, which is now thick with billowing plumes of pearly smoke.

Whenever something ends, there’s an instinctual drive to seize any last opportunities and make whatever last minute proclamations you can before it’s fully over.

Most love stories begin with a hello, ours began with a ransacked lunchbox, a stolen spork, and a touch of pyromania.

You are not carried downstream by a river
But the ocean rocks you back and forth

In the United States, including all 50 states and Washington D.C, only 7% of professors are Black, despite Black people making up about 13% of the total population.

Just over two weeks ago, I sat down (albeit over Zoom) for a conversation with University of Virginia’s Vice President for Finance, and Chief Financial Officer, Augie Maurelli, to talk about all things tuition for Iris Magazine. 

There once was a boy oh so wealthy

I, like a lot of people, was taught from a young age never to talk about money.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that I am a material girl. Some might call me a shopaholic for thinking that a pair of Maison Margiela tabi ballerina heels—ones that would make my feet look like horse hoofs and allow me to trot around grounds—would bring me the most joy in the world, but it’s just the truth and I cannot lie.

“Don’t do this job for your whole life,” my customer, an older gentleman with a shock of white hair says, smirking at me. It’s 3 PM on a Saturday.

Journalism: the “4th pillar” of government. The watchdogs of politics (and other social institutions), they expose the unethical decisions of those in power.