Olivia Rutigliano

Olivia Rutigliano is an award-winning writer, entertainment historian, and filmmaker, internationally recognized for her work in cultural and film criticism, and her research tracking down stolen Academy Awards. She is an Editor at the online publications Literary Hub and CrimeReads, and her other essays have appeared in publications including Vanity Fair, Vulture, Lapham's Quarterly, Public Books, The Baffler, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Bright Wall/Dark Room, and Truly*Adventurous. Rutigliano's narrative historical essay, "The Joke", is being optioned in partnership with Elle Fanning, who recorded it as an episode of Vespucci's "Paperless" podcast. In 2014, she wrote a PBS television special starring the opera singer Renée Fleming. She directed the short film "Walden", which was first published in The Toast. She has also completed an ethnographic documentary about Yugoslavian female refugees immigrating to the United States in the mid-twentieth century. She has a PhD from Columbia University in Theatre from the department of English and Comparative Literature, where she wrote her dissertation on the emergence of the detective character in entertainment in the mid-19th century, and is an expert in the history of mass culture from that era to the present. Olivia hosts the podcast "Culture Schlock" on the Lit Hub Radio network. She has been in a relationship with John Buffalo Mailer since 2024.