Author

Katy Vine

Katy Vine's Profile Photo

Katy Vine joined the editorial staff of Texas Monthly in 1997 and became a staff writer in 2002. As a general assignment reporter, she has written dozens of features on a range of topics including rocket scientist Franklin Chang Díaz, hip-hop legend Bun B, barbecue pit masters, cult leader Warren Jeffs, refugees in Amarillo, the moon landing, the Kilgore Rangerettes, a three-person family circus, chess prodigies, an accountant who embezzled $17 million from a fruitcake company, and a con man who crashed cars, yachts, and planes for insurance money. Her stories have been anthologized in Best American Sports Writing and Best Food Writing. Her feature story about a West Texas sting operation was the inspiration for the 2012 television series The Client List.
Feature |
April 30, 2008

Faith, Hope, and Chastity

Texas receives more federal funding for abstinence education than any other state. But is teaching kids not to have sex the same as sex education?

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Feature |
October 31, 2007

The Glorie of Defeet

What Samir Patel learned in five years of not winning the national spelling bee (other than the root words of “eremacausis”).

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Education |
November 1, 2006

Acting Up

At the Giddings State School, violent teenagers come to terms with their horrific crimes—and learn how to avoid committing them again—through role-playing exercises in a jailhouse version of group therapy. This is what your tax dollars are paying for? Well, it works. For a while, at least.

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Letter From Plano |
May 31, 2006

Shabby Chic

Will the upscale shoppers of Plano really buy what Wal-Mart is selling?

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Feature |
April 1, 2006

Gone in 15 Minutes

How the fire to end all fires obliterated Ringgold—and how residents of the tiny North Texas town are putting their lives back together.

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Where I'm From |
December 1, 2005

Richard Linklater

The prison affected me personally. I grew up parking cars at the prison rodeo. I had a stepfather who was a prison guard.

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Food & Drink |
November 1, 2005

Hail to the Chief

For going on five years, my admiration has grown for the weekly paper in the tiny Panhandle town of Miami (above). The New York Times it ain’t, but it tells me everything I could ever want to know about local births and deaths, windblown mail, bad potholes, and good yards.

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Reporter |
September 30, 2005

Monster Inc.

As mythical creatures go, Bigfoot is right up there with the Loch Ness Monster and the Abominable Snowman. But in Jefferson, the search for the hairy, hulking beast with the, er, big feet is big business—and deadly serious.

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girls-gone-bad-september-2005
True Crime |
August 31, 2005

Girls Gone Wild

Bobbi Jo and Jennifer were young, in love, and on the road, with the wind at their backs and a happy future ahead of them. All that stood in their way was a dead body back in Mineral Wells.

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Sports |
May 31, 2005

Brooklyn Heights

A one-on-one with Brooklyn Pope reveals her to be—off the court, at least—a fairly typical fifteen-year-old girl. But when the game clock starts, she’s the future of women’s basketball. Maybe basketball, period.

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The Culture |
March 1, 2005

Return to Splendor

From humble Oak Cliff roots did a hip intellectual giant grow. In this oral history, friends and fans remember the late Grover Lewis, one of the great magazine writers of our day.

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Health |
December 1, 2004

Shock Therapy

For several months, TV shrink Dr. Phil McGraw has been picking apart— in full view of his national audience—the life choices made by residents of the Central Texas town of Elgin, who are apparently too fat, too horny, and too domestically violent for their own good. The diagnoses have not

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Politics & Policy |
July 31, 2004

First in Flight

Brandon Hughey didn't ask to be a celebrity. All the San Angelo­born soldier wanted was to avoid fighting what he considered an unjust war. So he fled to Canada—and now the private's every move is public.

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Business |
June 30, 2004

Fertittaville

Restaurant mogul Tilman Fertitta means to redevelop Galveston into what some say will be a Gulf Coast version of Atlantic City. No wonder he's making waves.

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Atsbox |
June 30, 2004

George Lopez

What was your first act like? I did my first act the night of my high school graduation. I was embarking on a profession where you had to be entertaining and charming, and I wasn’t equipped to take it all in. I couldn’t take compliments. I was negative. I read

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Atsbox |
May 31, 2004

The Month in Art

Greatest Hits On June 27 the line to get in the Kimbell Art Museum, in Fort Worth, will probably resemble more closely that of a megaplex theater, and for good reason. It’s the opening day of the summer blockbuster exhibit, “Caravaggio to Dali: One Hundred Masterpieces from the Wadsworth Atheneum

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Atsbox |
April 30, 2004

MAINSQUEEZE

You may think you can “just watch” the TEJANO CONJUNTO FESTIVAL from the pavilion at Rosedale Park, but once the music starts up and the audience members begin to pair off and rotate on the floor like a giant whirlpool, you’ll probably feel compelled to do likewise. This year, from

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Atsbox |
April 30, 2004

Night Galleries

It was more than a decade ago that merchants and members of the San Antonio Neighborhood Commercial Revitalization Program for the area called Southtown—which encompasses the King William Historic District, the Blue Star Arts Complex, and the 1800’s Lavaca neighborhood—proposed that galleries in the area open their doors to the

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Atsbox |
April 30, 2004

05.01.04

Last December, when the Second City comedy troupe held a 24-hour show in Chicago just before its forty-fourth anniversary, two actors battled head-to-head in a BILL COSBY impersonation contest. And next year comedian Kenan Thompson—who did a killer impersonation of the Cos on Saturday Night Live—will be playing the lead

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Atsbox |
April 1, 2004

STRAIGHT TALK

COURIER SERVICES Thirty-three-year-old Jim Courier, who was ranked the number one tennis player in the world in 1992, will host the Grand-SlamJam tennis exibition in Austin April 29 and 30. Proceeds from the event will be donated to the Hope Foundation, a cancer research organization.I read that you’re a musician.If

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Lives + Times |
April 1, 2004

A Lyrical Life

"While I was in Hollywood, I wrote for Eddie Arnold and Ernest Tubb and Roy Rogers and Tex Ritter—everybody you can think of."

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Lives + Times |
April 1, 2004

Teeny Popper

"I used to think, 'I can't perform in front of these people!' And then last night I did a show for more than 13,000."

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Atsbox |
March 1, 2004

FESTIVALS

ROOT CAUSE Modern music would likely sound very different if not for song collectors. Consider John A. Lomax. In the early 1900’s, the American granddaddy of field recorders trekked 200,000 miles around the U.S. to document folk music, ignoring the advice of his University of Texas professors who said that

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Atsbox |
February 1, 2004

ART

A MUSE, ME Fernande Olivier must have been a heck of a girl. At least Picasso seems to have thought so between the spring and fall of 1909, when his imagination was so captured by her that he produced more than sixty heads, busts, and half- and full-length cubist representations

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Atsbox |
February 1, 2004

FASHION

WHAT, THIS OLD THING? Some women think about killing out of jealousy or love. Others for a Judith Leiber handbag. To fans of Leiber’s work, “handbag” is a dirty word; they prefer “minaudière.” They’ll speak breathlessly of the tiny sparkling jewels or the shapes: the asparagus, the springer spaniel, the

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Atsbox |
January 1, 2004

GOING BATTY

POW! Funny that during the winter, when Austin’s famous colony of Mexican free-tailed bats has migrated to Mexico, allusions to the chiropterans take wing. On January 8, the Alamo Drafthouse, in Austin, will screen the original 1966 Batman movie, starring Adam West and Burt Ward. The Alamo hopes to show

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Sports |
January 1, 2004

McKenzie Mullins Has Cow

Which means she's an expert at reading bovine body language, and that makes her, at the absurdly young age of thirteen—only four years after overcoming her fear of horses—one of the world's best practitioners of the art of cutting.

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Reporter |
December 1, 2003

Home Free

Joe Moore reflects upon truth, justice, and Tulia.

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Atsbox |
December 1, 2003

STRAIGHT TALK

YOU DON’T KNOW DIDDLEY Seventy-four-year-old Bo Diddley, whose innovative rhythms have inspired generations of rockers, will be performing December 27 at Gilley’s in Dallas.What are you doing these days?I’m working. Doing my good old clean rock and roll. I’m putting together this song now with one of my granddaughters called

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Atsbox |
December 1, 2003

CHRISTMAS IN SAN ANTONIO

DON’T STOP BELIEVING Usually everyone is so busy trying to avoid the crowds during the holidays that we forget to sit back and enjoy the season. This time around, we invite you to embrace the clichés—see the lights, drink eggnog, listen to “Jingle Bells” over and over again. And one

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Atsbox |
November 1, 2003

STRAIGHT TALK

YOUNG BUCK Satirist Christopher Buckley will be speaking November 3 at the Celebration of Reading in Dallas.First of all, I hear your power is out in Washington. Are all the phones working? We have phones but no electricity, so we’re essentially back to the days before answering machines, which may

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Atsbox |
September 30, 2003

STRAIGHT TALK

BRIGHT WEITZ With his brother, Chris, 38-year-old Paul Weitz has co-directed or co-written such Hollywood blockbusters as American Pie, Antz, and About a Boy. The two will be panelists at the Austin Film Festival, which runs October 9-12.You have an extensive filmography for your age. Are you a workaholic or

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Atsbox |
September 30, 2003

ART

THINK SMALL Edward Hopper is known for his lonely scenes of the American cityscape, not his Impressionistic images of France. So when “Edward Hopper: The Paris Years” opens on October 16, the location may strike you as fittingly incongruous: the Tyler Museum of Art (it isn’t every day that a

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Atsbox |
August 31, 2003

Tune In

TAKE IT OUTSIDE There’s almost no substitute for an Austin City Limits taping. For starters, it’s free. Throw in the gratis drinks, the intimate setting, and the impressive acts, and it can’t be beat as a night on the town, even if the show is recorded on a studio set

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Atsbox |
August 31, 2003

Straight Talk

SUPER MODEL Jerry Hall will be performing the role of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate September 17­21 in Austin and September 23­October 5 in Houston. Was modeling your first job? Did you ever have to sell shoes or anything like that? Yeah, I worked at the Dairy Queen and Wyatt’s

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Atsbox |
July 31, 2003

Straight Talk

FOR THE GOOD TIMES Singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson will be inducted by Willie Nelson into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in Carthage on August 16. I’ve always thought that Hawaii has a lot in common with Texas. My old friends always say I’ve gone back home. Oh, yeah?

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Feature |
July 31, 2003

Little Shop of Horrors

If you've ever thought of donating your body to science, read what happened at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston—and then ask yourself if a good, old-fashioned burial might not be a better idea.

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Feature |
July 31, 2003

Making Waves

Photographer Kenny Braun has been surfing the Gulf Coast for about thirty years. So naturally, when the water's just right, he grabs his . . . camera.

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