Barry Willis
Barry Willis is a writer, editor, and artist living in Sonoma County. A theater critic for the Marin Independent Journal, and formerly an art and theater critic with the Pacific Sun, he has been a member of the San Francisco Theater Critics Circle since 2006, and president of the organization since 2012. He is also a member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
In his non-theater life, he is an electronics expert specializing in high-performance audio and video. He worked for almost two decades as Contributing Editor for Stereophile magazine, the premier American audio journal, and was simultaneously a prolific contributor to that title’s sister publications including Ultimate AV, AudioVideo Interiors, Guide to Home Theater, and their respective websites, plus providing most of the news coverage appearing on the websites of publications such as Home Theater and Photographic. In 2005 he joined The Absolute Sound as news editor, and its sister publication The Perfect Vision as section editor for custom installation.
During the first years of high-definition television, he was also a frequent contributor to DTV Magazine, providing industry news, technology background pieces and reviews of new programs. Barry also occasionally contributed to Food Arts, the international journal of the fine dining industry. In 2006, he was Food Arts nominee for a James Beard Award in for Excellence in Journalism.
For the past decade Barry has been American correspondent for Hi-Fi News, the oldest and most respected audio-and-music journal in the United Kingdom, to which he contributes feature stories, a monthly column, and music reviews.