ESSAYS & REVIEWS

When I was a teenager I somehow got it into my head that I wanted to be an “essayist.” I don’t know where the idea came from, unless it was Joan Didion. (Like so many other LA kids I was obsessed.) I published my first essay—in the LA Reader, linked below—the day after my seventeenth birthday. A promising beginning. Alas, I didn’t always keep it up. In the decades since, I’ve written only a handful of essays. Still, I am collecting them here—along with a few reviews—in honor of my youthful aspirations.—RS

“What Words Can I Say to Declare That I’m Gay?” Harper’s Bazaar, June 7, 2022

“Written Up: A Personal History,” Los Angeles Review of Books, September 5, 2021

“Meryl Streep Wants to Tell You a Bedtime Story,” New York Times, November 11, 2019

“The Ghost in the Studio” in Hometown Pasadena, Colleen Dunn Bates, ed. (Prospect Park Books, 2018)

“Emma Donoghue’s New Novel Makes Diversity an Understatement,” New York Times, April 5, 2017

“Also Known As,” New York Times, May 4, 2016

“Forest of Wonders, by Linda Sue Park,” New York Times, March 11, 2016

“‘Gabriel Finley and the Raven’s Riddle’ and ‘Heap House’,” New York Times, October 17, 2014

“Kid Book Picks from Pseudonymous Bosch,” Dinner a Love Story, July 27, 2011

“Feeling Small,” Fresh Yarn, 2004

“Israel 90210” in Mentsh: On Being Jewish and Queer, Angela Brown, ed. (Alyson Books, 2004)

“He could drive even OC to abstraction” (obituary for Jacques Derrida) Los Angeles Times, October 24, 2004

“A View From the Hills,” Los Angeles Times, October 20, 2002

“A Number of Queers,” LA Weekly, May 21, 1993

“The Power and the Glory: Has Money Elevated the Status of Hollywood Writers?” Journal of the WGAW, February, 1993

“Resisting Arrest,” LA Weekly, December 11, 1992

“The Skeleton and the Closet: Joseph Hansen Shares the Mystery,” Outweek, June 26, 1991

“Buffalo Girls, Won’t You Come Out Tonight…” Outweek, June 6, 1990

“Hollywood Parents in Transit,” LA Reader, October 26, 1984