An American writer and journalist, she worked for Buzzfeed as a senior culture writer until 2020, when she began writing a newsletter for Substack subscribers. Petersen has also published in the opinion section of The New York Times. He started a personal blog at graduate school called Celebrity Gossip Academic Style, which has since morphed into a private Facebook group with more than 8,700 members. While working as a visiting professor at Whitman College, Petersen began writing about varied popular culture topics for digital media and found that she enjoyed non-academic writing. In May 2014 she moved to New York to write for Buzzfeed News and her first piece, "Jennifer Lawrence and the History of Cool Girls," went viral. She is also the author of the essay Scandals of Classic Hollywood. But his work at Buzzfeed wasn't just limited to celebrities, he's also written about issues like the pandemic, student loans, Native American politics, Medicaid expansion, refugee resettlement, religion, or the #metoo movement. Petersen is able to bring a perspective from the rural and from the perspective of living in a small town on issues such as the Antifa movement, guns or politics.