We are delighted to announce that Leah Greenblatt is joining Culture as a senior staff editor.
Leah is no stranger to the desk, of course. In addition to contributing a number of terrific stories across our coverage areas, Leah served as a key member of the team behind last year’s Best Movies of the 21st Century package. The year before that, while on the Books desk, she helped shepherd the Best Books of the 21st Century project. She is already working on our next canon initiative.
Leah will also partner with editors and writers on the desk to create service and community initiatives, audience-centered pieces including multimedia, and other coverage tied to tentpole events.
“If I knew even one-tenth of what Leah knows about the book, movie and TV world, I’d try to go on ‘Jeopardy!,’” said Aliza Aufrichtig of Digital News Design, who worked closely with Leah on the book and movie canon projects. (“Maybe Leah should go on ‘Jeopardy!,’” she added.) “In addition to her deep knowledge of books and culture, Leah is a joy to collaborate with — no task is too big or too small, and she does everything from writing dozens of book blurbs to chatting up movie execs with aplomb.”
Before she arrived at The Times in 2023 to fill in for an editor at The Book Review, Leah was a critic at large at Entertainment Weekly, covering film, books, music and theater; she previously edited the music coverage there. She has also written for Esquire, Vanity Fair and New York magazine. Leah grew up in California, studied in Seattle (where she interned at the Sub Pop record label) and moved to New York in 2003.
Her memorable pieces for The Times include reviewing Britney Spears’s embargoed memoir on a 15-hour turnaround; chronicling raunchy sex comedies, Tom Cruise plane stunts and the finagling of pop-song rights for indie films; and profiling artists such as Michael Keaton and Rose Byrne.
“Leah and I worked together at Entertainment Weekly,” said Tina Jordan, deputy books editor. “She’s a smart, incisive editor, a brilliant critic and writer (here’s one of my favorites, a 2015 profile of Prince) and a genuinely terrific colleague.”
Leah will report to Barbara Chai. Please join us in welcoming her to the desk full time.
— Sia