Welcome to the online home of Richard Speer, author of the biography Matt Lamb:  The Art of Success (John Wiley & Sons), short fiction including the recently published Blood, Sex, and Adobe, and a forthcoming novel.

Richard's articles and essays have appeared in Newsweek, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, Salon, Opera News, GLASS Quarterly, and Digital Photo Pro.

A critic-at-large for ARTnews and contributing editor at Art, Ltd., he has reviewed shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Palm Desert, Miami, Saint Petersburg, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon.  Since 2002 he has been visual arts critic at Portland's Pulitzer Prize-winning alternative weekly, Willamette Week.  He has authored catalogue essays about the work of Jun Kaneko, Eva Hild, Key-Sook Geum, Michael Kessler, Milton Rosa-Ortiz, and numerous other leading contemporary artists.

Click here for curriculum vitae.

A former TV news reporter now working in print, Richard has earned top accolades from The Associated Press and The Society of Professional Journalists for feature stories and profiles of cultural figures including Philip Glass, Luciano Pavarotti, Camille Paglia, E. Fay Jones, and Barbara Branden.  He lectures on cultural issues and has appeared as a talk radio guest on KRLA (Los Angeles), WJR (Detroit), KBOO (Portland), and WUCF (Orlando).

For photos of Richard ensconced with celebrities, politicians, and the one and only Richard Simmons, click here.  To see photographs taken by Richard, click here.  To email Richard, click here.