Rick Bass
Rick Bass’s essay about finding small ways to connect with the wild in an increasingly despoiled landscape was written before the oil spill in the Gulf, but its themes resonate. “I move past despair and anger at all the wilderness that’s been lost and will never be transferred to my kids, and then the rage comes back with something like this spill,” says the Houston native, whose next book, Nashville Chrome, will be published in September. “The joy of children is a great antidote, but it’s a tightrope. I don’t want to teach denial to my kids; I don’t want them to be happy for happy’s sake. Despair is not a productive emotion, but I cannot abide sugarcoating.”
Marcus Nilsson
For Marcus Nilsson, taking the photographs for “Sea Student” was a two-step process. He flew to Houston from New York to shoot chef Bryan Caswell at his ultrahip restaurant Reef, but he made the recipes from scratch at his home in Brooklyn. “We grilled on the rooftop of my studio,” he says. So what was his verdict? “That spice rub that Bryan puts on all the fish? That’s really amazing. And the butter? Oh, I’m a big fan of butter.”
S. C. Gwynne
Since 2000, S. C. Gwynne—his friends call him Sam—has profiled some of the state’s most powerful and colorful figures: Karl Rove, James Baker, Charles Hurwitz, and Mike Leach, just to name a few. But this month’s story about the return of the Chevy Suburban will likely be his last for texas monthly—at least for a while. Gwynne has joined the Dallas Morning News as a senior writer. “The magazine allowed me to reinvent myself as a writer,” he says. “I will be forever grateful for working with such a talented group of people.”
