The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia

Rick Pender has been an award-winning theater critic since 1986. He has written for CityBeat, Cincinnati's alternative newsweekly, since it was founded in 1994. He was the newspaper's arts and entertainment editor and is currently a contributing editor, reviewing local theater productions. In 2002 and again in 2017, the Society of Professional Journalists named him Ohio's best critic. Pender is past chair of the American Theatre Critics Association and was the executive editor and publisher of Everything Sondheim and managing editor of The Sondheim Review. He was also heard regularly as a broadcast interviewer for WVXU, Cincinnati's National Public Radio affiliate. Pender has interviewed Stephen Sondheim, onstage and in the studio, several times.