Stephen Harrigan
In 1984, when Stephen Harrigan started to work on a story for TEXAS MONTHLY about the sculptor Pompeo Coppini, he didn’t expect fictional inspiration to hit. But in Ballinger, he saw Coppini’s statue of a young man killed in a fall from a horse. “I liked the idea of his father, a brokenhearted old rancher in the middle of nowhere, taking it upon himself to commission a statue,” says Harrigan, whose new novel about a similar subject, Remember Ben Clayton, will be released by Knopf this month. “It was such a poignant story.”
John Burgoyne
Though this is John Burgoyne’s first time illustrating a story for TEXAS MONTHLY (“The Birdman of Texas”), he’s no stranger to sketching the avian species. “In college, whenever there was an open assignment,” the Massachusetts-based illustrator says, “I would be drawing birds.” Over the past 36 years, his work has appeared in National Geographic, the New York Times, and Cooks Illustrated. But his first paid illustration? “It was a package for Hyponex plant food,” he says, “for newspapers to use as clip art.”
Patricia Kilday Hart
Contributing editor Patricia Kilday Hart has been covering Texas politics for more than twenty years, most notably for this magazine’s biennial roundup of the Best and Worst Legislators. This month she graces our pages with a discussion of Representative Aaron Peña’s party switch (“No Peña, No Gain”). But sadly for us, Hart has accepted a job as a reporter with the Houston Chronicle. About Hart, senior executive editor Paul Burka says it best: “She is one of the most talented, professional, and experienced writers in Texas who can cover state politics.”
