Justin Carrasquillo
Call it a crash course in Texas. Though Justin Carrasquillo had never been to the state before, over the span of twenty days he drove to every corner of it for this month’s cover story (“Miles and Miles of Texas”). By the time he finished, he had shot more than 13,000 images and put 4,847 miles on his car. “Every day I would wake up at five, shoot during sunrise, drive, drive, drive, and shoot at sunset,” the Los Angeles–based photographer says. “I particularly loved South Padre Island. I thought to myself, ‘Whoa! This is Texas?’ ”
Sam Martin
“One of the key challenges facing magazines is how to change in the face of uncertainty,” says Sam Martin, who was recently hired as TEXAS MONTHLY’s director of digital strategy. “We all know change is necessary, but what a magazine should become is still evolving. A publication must articulate what it stands for and then establish those values across multiple platforms.” Martin, who has lived in Texas for much of his life, previously worked as director of publishing for Frog, a global design and innovation consultancy. He lives in Austin with his partner, Celeste, and their three sons.
Joe Nick Patoski
During Joe Nick Patoski’s seventeen years as a TEXAS MONTHLY staff writer (1985–2003), he was known in-house as the absolute authority on Texas arcana. If you needed to know who invented the Herkie, how Big Red got its name, or where the best chat-and-chew was in whatever small town you were headed to, Joe Nick had the answer. This month he’s finally back in our pages, detailing drives through the biodiversity of the West Texas desert and the musical heritage of the Panhandle. Welcome home, Señor Patoski.
