Prudence Mackintosh

Prudence Mackintosh is one of a circle of writers closely associated with Texas Monthly. She was a contributing editor from the magazine’s inception, in 1973, and her work has continued to appear in its pages for five decades. She gained a loyal following with her observations on social rites of passage for Texas women and her essays on the rearing of three boys. In 1976 she received a Penney-Missouri Award for excellence in lifestyle journalism. Her work has appeared in several national magazines and is anthologized in college writing texts. She is the author of four books: Thundering Sneakers, Retreads, Sneaking Out, and Just As We Were. She coauthored Great American Suburbs: The Homes of the Park Cities.

Born in Texarkana, Mackintosh grew up in the newspaper office of the Texarkana Gazette & Daily News, where her father was the editor and, for a time, her mother was a reporter, proofreader, and women’s editor. Her older brother became a television journalist. She attended Texarkana public schools and spent a pivotal summer at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Her college summers were spent working in Washington, D.C., including a 1965 stint in the White House. She graduated from the University of Texas in 1966. Mackintosh lives in Dallas with her attorney husband. Their three grown sons now live in Dallas and Austin. For eight years (2010–2017) she taught a nonfiction writing class for liberal arts honors students at UT. She continues to write for Texas Monthly sporadically as a writer-at-large.