June Naylor
A sixth-generation Texan, June Naylor has been writing about food since the late eighties. Growing up, her mom was “pretty into healthy foods,” with one important exception: her grandmother’s skillet-fried chicken. “I still get weak in the knees thinking about it,” she says. Naylor ate her first chicken-fried steak in college and since then has been a devoted fan of classic Texas foods. Lucky for us, she teamed up with Pat Sharpe and Katharyn Rodemann this month for “How to Cook Like a Texan”. And what is the Fort Worth native’s favorite dish to make? “Good ol’ Texas red,” she says. “I never tire of it.”
John Burnett
When John Burnett traveled to Matamoros to write about the cartel violence affecting Mexican journalists (“Dead Line”), he wasn’t worried about his own safety. “I was more nervous about the danger I was placing the journalists in,” he says. Burnett, a native Texan based in Austin, has covered the drug war south of the border for more than twenty years for programs like NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. “The mafia is in control in the city, and they don’t like certain news to be published,” he says. “The journalists there are under no illusions that anything is going to change.”
Al Reinert
Published in March 1973, Al Reinert’s first story on NASA for TEXAS MONTHLY was just the beginning of his exploration. Since then, he has written countless space stories, co-written the screenplay for Apollo 13, and produced and directed the award-winning documentary For All Mankind. “I’ve always been a space dork,” Reinert says. “But I blame TEXAS MONTHLY for turning me into a space writer.” As he set out to write about the last flight of the space shuttle (“The Last Blast”), he had mixed feelings. “I’m ready to move on, but I’m not sure America is,” he says. “It’s the end of an era.”
