Amy Dawes, 56, journalist and author

Amy Dawes, the Los Angeles entertainment journalist who was the author of "Sunset Boulevard: Cruising The Heart of Los Angeles,” died of cancer on Friday at Cedars-Sinai. She was 56 years old and is survived by her husband, Billy Vasquez.

Anne Thompson at IndieWire writes that Dawes "wrote insightfully about movies, television, music, popular culture and the city of Los Angeles. She was the consummate Hollywood insider and contributed frequently to Emmy Magazine and the Director’s Guild Quarterly as well as the Los Angeles Times, IndieWire, L.A. Weekly, Buzz magazine, the Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and Santa Fe." Dawes also wrote screenplays, including for Deborah Attoinese’s indie drama “Zoe” in 2001.

Dawes spent eight years at Daily Variety as a reporter covering studios and the independent film scene, and reported from film festivals such as Cannes and Sundance. She also was a senior editor on features for Variety. Later she was the editor of Creative Screenwriting Magazine. Before all that she was on the staff at the LA Daily News and the Herald-Examiner.

She wrote the Sunset Boulevard book, a bestseller in Southern California, for Los Angeles Times Books, the division that also originally published my book, "The San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb." Both of our books later came under the Angel City Press banner.

Vasquez is known to LA Observed readers for reviewing Los Angeles area restaurants and providing recipes as The 99 Cent Chef.