Letter from the Artsweek Editor: Write about the arts!

May 28, 2026 at 8:13 am by Stella Mullin

My identity lies in my writing. (Stella Mullin / Daily Nexus)

I look down at my feet and see flip-flop tanlines. Physical evidence of the leather flip flops I’ve done all but sleep in over the past four years — the shoes covered in tar that stick slightly when I walk.

I look up at my spilling bookshelves, loose-leaf papers on the verge of smothering me as I sleep and see a stack of newspapers. Physical evidence of all of the Daily Nexus copies I have been published in — the curled edges from gripping the Thursday-printed papers the second I got to campus.

At a school so large and the first true public school I had ever attended, the best piece of advice my mom gave me was to find a smaller community at UC Santa Barbara. I joined a sorority and the newspaper. The newspaper, the Daily Nexus, stuck.

I had never been in a working newsroom before — rows of ancient computers on wooden tables, chalk quotes from former editors splattering the concrete walls, newspapers covering every square inch of the place. I was home.

In all honesty, I joined Artsweek after having watched “Almost Famous” in high school, courtesy of my dad. I was going to be the next Cameron Crowe, and arts and culture reporting for my college paper seemed like the best place to start. A cliche dream turned into the best thing I could have ever dreamt up in my Penny Lane-obessed mind.

After having spoken a grand total of three sentences across two and a half quarters of writers’ meetings, quietly sitting in my spot on the molding green couch (one I would never sit on now), I made a leap, spoke a few more times and applied to be the Artsweek assistant editor February of my freshman year. While at a concert a few weeks later, a sweaty man spilled his warm beer and, at the same moment Coors Light was trickling down my back, my phone buzzed: “Congratulations on your new position!” My very first thought: “Who the hell is Lauren Chiou?”

As it turns out, she was the best co-editor I could have asked for. Lauren, those early months of getting to know each other were some of my favorites of my time here. It has been an absolute privilege to get to lead, and laugh, alongside you and I am so excited to see you rule Washington, D.C. Together, we ran Artsweek for three years — teaching ourselves what “writer retention” was, redesigning the way the section operated as sophomores and spending long Tuesday nights teaching ourselves InDesign.

After getting hired at the Nexus, I stopped going to the library. This office was my favorite place on campus. (Shengyu Zhang / Daily Nexus)

Tuesday nights are the defining factor of my college experience. I do not know what a Tuesday night in Isla Vista looks like, but I do know a Tuesday night under Storke Tower: print night. A meeting place of UCSB’s journalists, all yelling at an Adobe software program that never quite listened. But out of the frustration came creativity and a discovery that journalism is creative. I began to understand that the way words lay on a page changed an entire story.

If Tuesday nights define my college experience, paper defines my life. Lined paper, white paper, newspaper, all forms follow me wherever I go. I do not know a life in which writing is not a part of my day-to-day routine. For years preceding UCSB, I have always had something to write, something to edit, something to publish. I thank my third grade teacher, Mrs. Armanino, for instilling that obsession in me. My identity lies in my writing.

Arts and culture writing is easy to overlook. It’s not breaking news, it doesn’t always offer brain-puzzling ideas, but it does explain what makes humans human. That is why I love it. I have gotten to highlight Isla Vista artists and creatives and its eclecticism in its entirety. I interviewed one of my favorite bands, Babe Rainbow, made sure UCSB’s women in media got the attention they deserved and the article I love the most: uncovering Dave from the Grave, KCSB’s biggest fan.

Dave from the Grave (David Schoof) took weeks, if not months, to write. It was a project I took on my sophomore year and one I still am the proudest of, tracking down KCSB DJs from the early 2000s when I was 19 years old. I didn’t even have my own LinkedIn yet and I was deep-stalking others. One of my interviews was with a UCSB alum now living in South Korea.

I interviewed Schoof’s sister and, after the piece came out, I was told it was the first real obituary for the Santa Barbara local. I saw what arts and culture writing could do and received an influx of messages thanking me for sharing his story. In the months I spent researching, it never dawned on me that that could have been a result. I never wrote it for the accolades, I wanted to share a story that I could only describe as “sick.” And then I fell in love with arts and culture reporting.

To Kendra, my once assistant and now co-editor, I am so excited to see you run this section. I have loved every second of taking turns on the ancient computers, sharing loud sighs and racing to make edits. And to Jake, welcome to Artsweek. I would do it all again if I could.

I am scared for my future. With graduation looming nearer, I have found myself waking up in the middle of the night in a panic, thoughts racing through my mind on the endless tunnel of freelancing. I get frustrated that the one thing I love most in this world also happens to be one of the most unstable careers I could choose.

I also know that journalism is a foundational check on the United States’ government — one that will never be eradicated. Even with President Donald Trump’s infringements on freedom of the press, journalists will always be writing. I am not giving up yet but, if in 20 years I look back and see this as the end of my journalistic career, I would be honored to end with the Daily Nexus.

After four years of living and writing here, a life without an office under Storke Tower, battling InDesign, getting made fun of for being the most “non-pop culture” arts and culture editor there was and looking left and right and then left again before crossing the bike path feels unfathomable. What am I going to do on Tuesday nights now?

– Stella Mullin, Outgoing Artsweek Editor