Alexandra Petri ’06 to Deliver 2011 Commencement Address

Editorial writer and humor columnist Alexandra Petri will deliver the address at NCS’ 111th Commencement on June 12, 2011. The service will take place starting at 4:00 pm in the National Cathedral.

Petri is a 2006 NCS alumna whose love of writing and humor first took root at NCS as founder of the now-defunct humor magazine The Perturbed Squirrel, and co-editor of Half-in-Earnest. The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards awarded Petri two awards for humor writing and included her writing (“Bush Declares Plans for War on Weather”) in their annual compilations of best teen writing. Two of her short plays received performances from Arena Stage as part of their Young Playwrights’ contest. She also was the winner of the Flag at the 2006 NCS Flag Day.

 

Petri graduated in 2010 from Harvard, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude in English with a secondary field in Ancient Greek , and was selected to deliver the humorous Class Day Ivy Oration, which she delivered on the subject of “Elevator Safety and Immortality.” While an undergraduate, she co-wrote the freshman musical and two shows for the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the oldest collegiate theatrical organization, as part of the first-ever all-female writing team, as well as roasts of celebrities from James Franco to Anne Hathaway. She also served as co-president of the stand-up comic society and was inducted into the Signet Society of Arts and Letters, whose past members include T. S. Eliot and Frank Rich. She received the Wendell Prize for most promising freshman scholar, the Hoopes Prize for her senior thesis (a verse translation of Aristophanes’ Frogs), and the Le Baron Russell Briggs Travelling and Thesis Prize.

While at Harvard, Petri also discovered a love of writing columns, penning “Petri Dishes,” a humor column, for The Harvard Crimson. After interning with The Washington Post for a summer of writing editorials, she returned the subsequent summer and began a humor blog which subsequently blossomed into the "Compost" and a Saturday column. She has appeared on Showbiz Tonight, Jeopardy!, Al Jazeera, WNYC Radio, and Canadian radio, and her writing has been quoted everywhere from The Huffington Post to NPR’s "Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me," and the “Best Columns” section of The Week magazine.

NCS looks forward to welcoming Alexandra back to the Close!