Emily St. Martin

Emily St. Martin reports on the human and cultural fallout of fame, tracking how celebrities, authors and media figures navigate crisis, controversy and success in public view. She is a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, covering fast-breaking entertainment news on the Fast Break Desk and contributing reported features and criticism for the Books desk. Her beat sits at the intersection of breaking entertainment news, culture and books, with a focus on the writers, obsessions and cultural currents shaping the zeitgeist.

Celebrity crises, privacy and public fallout

St. Martin regularly covers celebrity crises that blur the line between public curiosity and private pain, including legal actions, health emergencies and reputational battles. Her reporting on rapper Mystikal’s 20-year prison sentence for rape, including his statement that he “deserve[s] the max,” shows a willingness to confront the legal and moral stakes of high-profile cases while keeping the focus on accountability and the court record.

She has chronicled Perez Hilton’s mental health crisis through a series of updates on his family’s pleas for privacy, false reports about his condition and his supervised reunions with his children, emphasizing safety and the family’s attempt to reclaim a measure of normalcy from intense media scrutiny.

She follows the aftermath of substance use and overdose within celebrity families, co-reporting on the death of Cindy Crawford’s son Presley Gerber at a luxury outpatient rehab facility and subsequent questions about the source of drugs and the oversight at high-end sober living homes. St. Martin covers reality television figures in similar detail, such as Teresa Giudice’s request for privacy for her daughter Milania after an airport incident in which bodycam footage revealed she had fentanyl in her system, again foregrounding the tension between public documentation and a family’s appeal for space. She also reports on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s efforts to relocate and move their children to a new school over security concerns, tying questions of safety and privacy to broader narratives about royal life and celebrity. Pieces on Fox News host Kat Timpf’s pregnancy more than a year after a double mastectomy underscore her interest in the health realities behind public personas, treating bodily vulnerability as central to the story rather than an aside.

Books coverage and literary culture in the pop spotlight

Alongside breaking news, St. Martin writes extensively for the Books desk, focusing on how literature reflects and shapes pop culture and public life. Her long interview with John Green about his adult debut “Hollywood, Ending” examines a nine-year fiction hiatus, his inability to picture images and the way his new novel follows young actors confronting the cost of fame, connecting reading to the mechanics of celebrity and the price of visibility. She profiles Gabrielle Korn’s novel “Long Island Girls” as a millennial time capsule steeped in American Apparel aesthetics and AIM-era angst, highlighting early-adulthood humiliation, shifting media careers and the hard economics of making art as central themes.

St. Martin’s work often centers women whose stories changed media and culture. Her feature on Gloria Steinem’s stint in a Playboy bunny suit frames the decision as a strategic move that allowed other female writers to leap forward, using the episode to explore the power and risk of women’s stories in hostile environments. She distills “heartbreaking takeaways” from Earl Charles Spencer’s book “Swan Song: Diana, My Sister,” drawing out how his account of Princess Diana’s life and death reopens questions about family, monarchy and media responsibility. Her coverage of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library details how the program has placed more than 330 million books into children’s hands and is structured to outlive its founder, treating literacy as a primary legacy of a music icon. Through a cluster of stories about “Odyssey” translator Emily Wilson and the heated debates surrounding her work - from a viral review to a fresh retranslation that breaks with convention - St. Martin shows how scholarly arguments can become pop-culture battles, with authors and critics trading public blows over canon and interpretation.

Fast-break entertainment and pop culture news

On the Fast Break Desk, St. Martin turns around quick, tightly framed pieces on music, television and celebrity news without losing specificity. She has covered Wynonna Judd’s confirmation of a rift with her sister Ashley Judd and their decision to “take a break,” giving clear language to family strain in the public eye. Her reporting on Ella Langley includes a concert where the country singer pauses mid-set to call out online bullies, as well as follow-up pieces on her budding romance with another musician and the record-breaking success of her song “Choosin’ Texas,” situating a rising artist at the intersection of chart performance and digital backlash. She reports on “Jersey Shore” star DJ Pauly D’s engagement to Nikki Hall after six years of dating, and the death of Dennis Haskins, beloved for playing Principal Belding on “Saved by the Bell,” combining concise timeline details with the emotional hooks fans recognize.

Her pieces on Megan Moroney’s abrupt cancellation of a Denver show mid-set because of illness use tour schedules and venue details to show the pressure on a young country star pushing through her first major headlining tour. St. Martin also handles brand and campaign controversies, including coverage of Converse pulling a sneaker ad after social media users said the imagery evoked the Ku Klux Klan, explaining how visuals were received and why the company reversed course in plain, direct terms. She has written about auctions and memorabilia, such as a sale of more than 400 items from Paul Reubens’ career with a focus on a handful of highlights, reinforcing her interest in how cultural artifacts and nostalgia are packaged and sold.

Background in culture journalism and award-winning commentary

St. Martin brings a long track record in culture journalism to her current beat.

She has previously worked at The Hollywood Reporter and served as digital features editor at Southern California News Group, guiding culture and entertainment coverage across multiple publications while contributing her own reporting on books. As a longtime freelancer, her work has appeared in the New York Times, BBC, Los Angeles Magazine, Vice, InStyle and Cosmopolitan, among other outlets, spanning first-person essays, cultural criticism, editorials on the importance of journalism and deep dives into the digital aftershocks of conspiracy and addiction. Her reporting has been recognized with a California Journalism Award, multiple Los Angeles Press Club honors and a first-place award for best editorial from the L.A.

Press Club in 2025.

Beyond print, she contributes to audio and documentary storytelling, including work on the film “Gone Before Her Time: Brittany Murphy,” which examines the life and death of the actor and the narratives that followed. Taken together, this background explains the shape of her current coverage: fast, clear news stories on entertainment and celebrity crises, paired with book-focused features and cultural essays that treat reading, representation and the ethics of storytelling as core parts of the entertainment beat.