She the author of The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence (University of Chicago Press, 2010). She writes about culture and politics for a variety of publications including The Washington Post Book World, The Boston Review, Dissent, The Nation, Guernica, The Forward, and The New Humanist; her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Dance Ink. Linfield was formerly the arts editor of The Washington Post, the deputy editor of The Village Voice, the editor-in-chief of American Film, and a critic for the Los Angeles Times Book Review. She has taught in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program since its inception in 1995.