Friends Remember Lauren Blackburn ’26 and the ‘Greatness Inside of Him’
A family obituary said Blackburn died after a ‘courageous battle with bipolar disorder’
Editor’s note: If you or someone you know may have suicidal thoughts, you can call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat online at 988lifeline.org
Lauren Blackburn ’26, an English major who loved Virginia Woolf and lavender matcha, was found dead on campus Friday, April 25, the University announced, following several days of searching after he was declared missing. A family obituary said the death came after a “courageous battle with bipolar disorder.” He was 23.
Julia Shin ’26 met Blackburn in their English junior seminar about Paris and New York, taught by Joshua Kotin.
“He was truly someone with, very simply put, a greatness inside of him,” Shin said. “Everyone could see it.”
Blackburn was born Aug. 11, 2001, in Oregon. He was a National Merit Scholar and a Gates Scholar when he graduated from Corydon Central High School in Indiana. Blackburn took a year to serve on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2020-21.
Kotin said that Blackburn was “very quiet in the seminar, very thoughtful.” He told PAW that Blackburn had a “shapeliness to his prose that you don’t typically see” in undergraduate students.
Blackburn’s junior paper adviser, Maria DiBattista, told PAW that she and Blackburn were “like collaborators, almost co-conspirators,” through their love of Virginia Woolf.
“At our first meeting we discovered that both of us felt that To the Lighthouse mirrored our thoughts, feelings, perplexities as no other book quite did,” DiBattista wrote. Maybe that’s why he wanted to write a novel, Shin mused — to be that expression of thoughts and feelings for someone else.
“Every Monday morning of term, except the last, he would come to my office and we would set about working through his complex ideas about Woolf’s notions of the self and its relation to history,” DiBattista wrote, “this time as presented in one of her late works, The Years, a novel — these are Lauren’s own words now — ‘of repeated approach and retreat, of hazy visions that break apart the moment they begin to come into view.’”
Both Shin and Blackburn loved to write poetry, and both dreamed of going to graduate school for English. Blackburn won a 2024 Sam Hutton Fund for the Arts award and “spent that summer in South Korea taking classes and learning more about his Korean roots,” according to his obituary. He also enjoyed K-pop and cheered for the Boston Celtics, Kansas City Chiefs, and Tottenham Hotspur.
Kotin was supportive of Blackburn’s graduate school dreams — encouragement he didn’t give out lightly. In their last meeting, Kotin said he gave Blackburn advice on what classes he should take senior year to best prepare for graduate school.
Blackburn’s ideas were so good that he was “a step or two ahead of himself.” For one junior seminar assignment, Kotin asked students to read a piece of literary criticism and write an essay agreeing or disagreeing with the critic. Kotin said that Blackburn’s argument was better than the argument made by the critic he was writing about.
Kelly Kim ’26, another of Blackburn’s close friends from his junior seminar, gave PAW permission to share her online writings about him.
“You were the best. You really were the greatest. I should have told you more often but I loved you so much. You were the greatest. I’ve been writing about you but it STILL feels stupid because nothing can convey just how great you are,” Kim wrote in an Instagram post. “I am so grateful for you. Thank you for letting me into your life. I am so grateful.”
Shin told PAW that Blackburn was known among friends to carry stuffed animals and candies with him to study sessions.
“He was always ready to comfort you if you were sad,” Shin said. “He would always show up for his friends.”
On April 29, Blackburn’s family released a statement to the University community.
“The immense support has lightened our hearts and strengthened us in this difficult time. This is a truly special community that our son loved being a part of,” the wrote. “He loved learning, the classes, and the many people he met here. We will be forever grateful that he could be a Tiger.”
Gifts in Lauren’s name may be made to the International Bipolar Foundation. Friends have also organized a GoFundMe to support his family.
“Your family is graciously giving me your typewriter,” Kim wrote. “I know you used to write dream journals on there, and while … I don’t think I can use your machine just yet for fear of erasing your fingerprints, I’ll write about my dreams too.”
DiBattista told PAW that Blackburn was eager to read, curious to learn about how others perceived the world.
“In what must have been one of the final essays he wrote, there is a sentence, simple but incredibly moving,” DiBattista wrote, “that captures the fractured yet sustaining vision of life and art that he shared with Woolf but made very much his own: ‘History must be experienced; meaning must be felt.’”
Blackburn is survived by his parents, Marty and Soonhee Blackburn, and his four siblings: Ella, Colin, Cardon, and Quincy.
Update: A report released by the Middlesex Country Medical Examiner on June 10 said that Blackburn died by suicide.
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