Contributors
Paul Burka
In more than three decades of covering Texas politics, senior executive editor Paul Burka has watched countless politicians rise and fall. Now he can add Tom DeLay to that list. “Without DeLay” actually started out as a story focusing on the congressman’s reelection campaign; his sudden decision to step down gave Burka only a few days to recast the piece (“A week later and I’d have been dead,” he notes). So will Texans talk about DeLay in the future? “In five years, nobody will remember him,” Burka says. “It is the nature of the political world. Except for presidents, everybody fades quickly from view. We’re all footnotes.”
Amy Prince
“My mom always told me that I have expensive taste,” says writer-at-large Amy Prince, a Plano native whose picks for Buy This Now represent Texas Monthly’s latest serious foray into fashion and design. It’s that refined sensibility—and a background in writing for such style authorities as GQ and Women’s Wear Daily—that allows Prince to cull the most cutting-edge goods in the state. “I like finding products that typify modern Texas,” she says. “I look for that something you’ll think about even after putting the magazine away.” Look no further than this month for proof: You’ll be hard-pressed to find another table with such, er, bounce.
Romulo Yanes
The lush photographs in “A Desert Feast” traveled an admittedly circuitous route. The food hails from the Rio Grande Valley, but the images were shot in (gasp!) Manhattan. Still, the results were well worth the trouble: Romulo Yanes, who has been a staff photographer with Gourmet magazine since 1984, effortlessly captured the down-home quality of recipes like cactus cornbread. “I want the dish to be the star,” Yanes says. “Everything else is secondary to that.” And though the Cuban native raved about the food, he did have one caveat. “As wonderful as the black beans were,” he says with a laugh, “with all due respect, they can’t beat my mom’s.”
My Library
