An English Pastoral

Eric McElroy ’13 Music, piano; Chu-Yu Yang, violin

SOMM Recordings: 2025

McElroy and Yang perform early twentieth-century British music from composers Ivor Gurney, Arthur Bliss, and Gerald Finzi, as well as music by Ian Venables, one of Britain’s most accomplished living composers. McElroy, described by Musical Opinion as “one of the leading composer-pianists of his generation,” joins award-winning Taiwanese violinist Joe Chu-Yu Yang in showcasing transformations in English pastoral music with modernist elements.

Listen to a Washington State Magazine podcast episode with McElroy after his debut album in 2023.

 

Come On In, Don’t Get Lonesome

Lauri Cruver Cherian ’86 Ed.

BookBaby: 2025

In this historical novel, set in 1910 and inspired by the author’s own ancestry, each new boarder at Tacoma’s Old Alpha is greeted with the line from which the book title stems. Cherian’s great-grandparents ran the boarding house, and their six-year-old⁠—Cherian’s grandmother⁠—is the darling of the residence that housed immigrants who poured into the boomtown for railroad jobs and work in fishing, shipping, milling, and boat building.

 

The Enigma of Grief and the Sublime

Robert Arnold Johnson ’64 Zool., Susan Eileen Pickett and Mark G. Brown

2025

The authors explore the relationship between grief and the sublime, purporting that grief is sublime sadness⁠—and widely misunderstood. They offer works of literary, musical, and visual art to encourage feeling the sublime within sadness of loss. Johnson practiced medicine in Walla Walla for nearly two decades before switching careers and opening his own private psychiatry practice. He retired in 2018.

 

Animate(d) Architecture: A Spatial Investigation of the Moving Image

Edited by Vahid Vahdat

Liverpool University Press: 2024

This volume, edited by Vahid Vahdat, assistant professor of architecture and interior design at WSU’s School of Design and Construction, explores the imagined architecture of animation. The interdisciplinary approach surveys the role of space in animation and an analytical frame to reconceptualize space. It was a finalist for best anthology of 2025 in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

 

Natural Protein-based Strategies for Batteries

Chenxu Wang ’23 PhD Mech. Eng. and Weihong Zhong

World Scientific Publishing: 2025

This book explores how natural proteins can be engineered into key components for electrochemical energy storage, and an overview of recent advances, advantages, challenges, and future perspectives for developing high-performance, environmentally friendly, and cost-effective EES technologies. Zhong is a professor at the WSU School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. Wang was her student.