Robin Abcarian
Robin Abcarian is a columnist at the Los Angeles Times. Focusing mostly on California culture, news and politics, she roams the Golden State, reporting stories that help readers understand what makes this place unique. Over the past year, she has devoted many columns to helping readers understand the complex issues they would have to consider as they made up their minds about whether to legalize cannabis for adult recreational use. Abcarian has held many positions at The Times. She covered the 2004, 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns full time, and wrote occasionally about the 2016 campaign. As a culture writer for the paper’s Calendar section, she has covered the Oscars, the Emmys and the Sundance Film Festival. For most of the 1990s, she was a columnist for The Times’ feature section, before becoming its editor in 2003.
Recent Articles
-
Women won’t be silenced — sexual harassers are on notice
For sexual harassers, 2017 has been a year of reckoning. In October, the New York Times and the New Yorker published bombshell reports on movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, detailing numerous accusations of sexual abuse and secret settlements. Days later, the Los Angeles Times published a report alleging...
-
They leapt into a pool to save themselves from fire, their story went viral, now they are starting over
After the fire, they had nothing. To their surprise, they also had everything. You may recall the story of Jan LeHecka Pascoe and her husband, John, who spent six terrified hours in a neighbor’s swimming pool, slipping below the surface to avoid the flames and embers, coming up for air, then slipping...
-
In Northern California, forgotten victims of the wildfires struggle to regain their footing
Claudia and Francisco Alvarez had what they thought was a perfect situation in the mountains west of Calistoga in Napa County. For several years, they worked and lived on the grounds of a rustic guest ranch with their two children, Steven, 7, and Sofia, 4. Claudia was in charge of housekeeping...
-
At the country's biggest cannabis county fair, legalization is met with a mixture of relief and fear
-
At the country's biggest cannabis county fair, legalization is met with a mixture of relief and fear
There's no better place to see the transition from prohibition to legalization than the Emerald Cup, which has gone from a funky, muddy festival to a professionalized, branded event that draws hundreds of cannabis farmers out of the Northern California hills and thousands of their fans.
-
Las mujeres que acusan a Trump por acoso sexual exigen que el Congreso haga algo
Este lunes, en la ciudad de Nueva York, tres de las 16 mujeres que se presentaron el año pasado para acusar públicamente al entonces candidato presidencial Donald Trump por acoso y agresión sexual, exigieron acciones al respecto en el Congreso. El trío sostiene que un desfile de hombres poderosos...
-
Trump's accusers are back, and this time they're demanding that Congress do something
On Monday in New York City, three of the 16 women who came forward to publicly accuse then-presidential candidate Donald Trump of sexual harassment and assault returned to demand congressional action. They have watched a parade of powerful men toppled from exalted positions, and they wonder why...
-
Mesmerized by the terrible beauty of the flames, waiting for the Santa Anas to do their worst
Just east of Ojai, where the citrus orchards back up to the Los Padres National Forest, I pulled my car over and got out. It was pitch black, but for the orange glow of the blazing mountain. There was barely a breeze. But that could change quickly. We are having a Santa Ana moment right now. The...