Green Eggs and Kao
I thought I’d teach my young son’s Laotian friend about all the essentials of American culture, including Dr. Seuss. I just never imagined how much he’d teach me.
Mimi Swartz, the author, with Sherron Watkins, of Power Failure, The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron, is an executive editor of Texas Monthly. Previously, she was a staff writer at Talk, from April 1999 to April 2001, and a staff writer at the New Yorker from 1997 to 2001. Prior to joining the New Yorker, she worked at Texas Monthly for thirteen years. In 1996 Swartz was a finalist for two National Magazine Awards and won in the public interest category for “Not What the Doctor Ordered.” She was also a National Magazine Award finalist for her November 2005 issue story on tort reform, titled “Hurt? Injured? Need a Lawyer? Too Bad!” and won the 2006 John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest, Magazine Journalism, for the same story. In 2013 she won her second National Magazine Award (again in the category of public interest), for “Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, Wives,” a compelling look at the state of women's health care in Texas.
Over the years, Swartz’s work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Slate, National Geographic, and the New York Times’ op-ed page and Sunday magazine. It has also been collected in Best American Political Writing 2006 and Best American Sportswriting 2007. She has been a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 1994. Swartz grew up in San Antonio and graduated from Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She now lives in Houston with her husband, John Wilburn, and son, Sam.
I thought I’d teach my young son’s Laotian friend about all the essentials of American culture, including Dr. Seuss. I just never imagined how much he’d teach me.
By Mimi Swartz
An idyllic small town confronts a controversial rape case involving four high school boys and a thirteen-year-old girl and discovers that nothing is certain—except that its children can’t escape the big-city culture of teenage sex.
By Mimi Swartz
The latest star pupil of the so-called Houston school.
By Mimi Swartz
The inside story of how industrious NASA scientists discovered signs of life in a Martian rock and boosted the fortunes of the tabloids, Hollywood producers, and even the president.
By Mimi Swartz
Practicing what he preaches.
By Mimi Swartz
On the road with Victor Morales, the schoolteacher turned U.S. Senate candidate who is out to prove he’s not running on empty.
By Mimi Swartz
Texas’ top drug lawyer helps dope dealers and cocaine kingpins beat their raps—and he’s proud of it.
By Mimi Swartz
Steve Stockman was supposed to have been a lethal weapon in the Republicans’ fight to unmake the Great Society. Instead the freshman legislator has been a loose cannon—an outsider in his own party.
By Mimi Swartz
A daughter’s gruesome murder became a grieving father’s dark crusade to find her killer and thrust him into an ever-widening spotlight as an advocate for victims of violent crime.
By Mimi Swartz
Five chic interior design stores in Fredericksburg are comforting, inspiring, and for the acquisitive, absolutely irresistible.
By Mimi Swartz
No longer judged a lightweight.
By Mimi Swartz
Universally appealing.
By Mimi Swartz
Give her regards to Broadway.
By Mimi Swartz
From invention to litigation, the breast implant has done more for Houston’s economy—and its psyche—than anything since oil.
By Mimi Swartz
Gigantic homes. Gala parties. Nonstop schmoozing. The hip summer playground of Houston’s high society is … Galveston?
By Mimi Swartz
By Mimi Swartz
How an old-fashioned Texas physician fought the takeover of modern medicine by heartless insurance companies—and lost.
By Mimi Swartz
By Mimi Swartz
Anna Nicole Smith got her man: the full story on the big gal’s marriage to octogenarian oilman J. Howard Marshall.
By Mimi Swartz
By Mimi Swartz
Houston cartoonist Michael Fry takes on the trials of two-career parenting.
By Mimi Swartz
We are sixth-generation Texans and we are Jews. My family’s history is an account of the price we have paid to be both.
By Mimi Swartz
The story of this notorious East Texas city isn’t a simple racist fable. It’s a complicated tragedy about a society that has lost its way.
By Mimi Swartz
Stardom has caught up with Tommy Lee Jones—finally. But don’t expect him to act like he’s enjoying it.
By Mimi Swartz
One boy’s excellent adventure at the new playground of the nineties.
By Mimi Swartz
In her new book, Georgette Mosbacher gives feminism a feminine touch.
By Mimi Swartz
Ikea appeals to twentysomethings who are beyond bricks and boards but not yet ready for a lifetime furniture commitment.
By Mimi Swartz
Twenty years ago, we were two-steppers. Now we’re twelve-steppers, thanks to a set of self-help gurus.
By Mimi Swartz
With wit and grit, Amarillo-born photographer Mark Seliger persuades reluctant celebrities to show their true selves.
By Mimi Swartz
When the young daughter of a friend walked sooner than my son, my feminist politics collided with my loyalties as a mom.
By Mimi Swartz
Being the nation’s most famous interpreter of Texas politics sounds like fun. But for Molly Ivins, success has been no laughing matter.
By Mimi Swartz
Bare and spare, J. Crew’s newest retail outlet pays homage to refined minimalism.
By Mimi Swartz
Two prominent families, one soapy feud. What could be better for a summer miniseries?
By Mimi Swartz
How to beat the heat, find the food, and master the coasters at Texas’ four big theme parks.
A report from the front lines in the battle of the sexes—inside the Aggie corps.
By Mimi Swartz
Some Vietnamese immigrants live the American dream. But for the family of Vu Dinh Chung, the dream turned into a fatal nightmare.
By Mimi Swartz
Blood in the Streets. Houstonians and homicide detectives struggle to cope with a deadly crime wave.
By Mimi Swartz
Like Houston, the Galleria was hit hard by the bust. Now savvy marketing and a face lift have brought back its glamour.
By Mimi Swartz
To understand Wanda Holloway’s dark and desperate story, you have to start with where she came from.
By Mimi Swartz
Love, love, kiss, kiss: New York’s hippest store meets Texas’ fashion capital.
By Mimi Swartz
Kristin Bauman, the 21-year-old with a $1.2 million trust fund, learned early on that notoriety is far more seductive than propriety.
By Mimi Swartz
Revealing profiles of Ann Richards and Clayton Williams raise the question: How about none of the above?
By Mimi Swartz
My phone habit saps my energy and drains my wallet. But wait—there’s my other line. Can you hold?
By Mimi Swartz
In honor of the Economic Summit, Houstonians are cleaning up their act and driving themselves nuts.
By Mimi Swartz
Architects are up in arms over plans for the Kimbell.
By Mimi Swartz
A small-town boy’s journey from Texas to the cosmos.
By Mimi Swartz
In the town George Parr once dominated, a nineteen-year-old mother was gang-raped by her neighbors. In the aftermath of the crime, the old horrors of San Diego have surfaced anew.
By Mimi Swartz
Houston’s city controller prided himself on being the most scrupulously honest politician in town. So why did he sign his name to someone else credit card?
By Mimi Swartz
With a mother in one city and a father in another, Audrey Reynolds took to the air.
By Mimi Swartz
A special celebration.
By Mimi Swartz