Contributors

John Nova Lomax

John Nova Lomax's Profile Photo

John Nova Lomax was a senior editor with Texas Monthly from 2015 to 2019.

He was an oyster shucker in Tennessee, a landscape gardener and British Telecom mail clerk in Lancashire, and a field hand on a kibbutz in the Arava section of the Negev in Israel. He also authored Houston’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the Bayou City, a guidebook to Houston dive bars, and coauthored Murder & Mayhem in Houston: Historic Bayou City Crime, a compilation of notorious Houston crimes. 

Lomax was a full-time journalist in the Bayou City from 2001 until shortly before his death in 2023. He spent eleven years at the Houston Press as a music editor and staff writer and was proudest of helping discover Hayes Carll, helping rediscover Lil’ Joe Washington, and winning an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award in 2008. With future Marfa city councilman and justice of the peace David Beebe, Lomax walked a total of more than two hundred miles of Houston streets on about a dozen different trips, writing about the adventures as part of the “Sole of Houston” blog series. After leaving the music beat, Lomax covered crime, courts, and culture for the Press. His work also appeared in Spin, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and LA Weekly. 

244 Articles

Libations|
December 30, 2016

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

In the age of gastropubs and microbreweries, Texas still boasts a few real dive bars—where the jukebox is irreplaceable, the beer is domestic, and the patrons feel like family—if you know where to look.

Sports|
October 19, 2016

Orange Crush

Who needs the playoffs? After years (and years and years) of heartache, Houston has fallen for the Astros all over again.

Energy|
October 4, 2016

The Future of Balmorhea

There's been a lot of hang-wringing over what could happen to one of the state's most treasured pools in the midst of the latest oil discovery, but an environmental research group is optimistic about the outcome.

The Daily Post|
April 26, 2016

These Official State Symbols Could Use Revisiting

In March, Texas Monthly‘s Christian Wallace excoriated the fact that the unloved “Texas, Our Texas” remained our state song in spite of hundreds of worthier alternatives. You had a lot of thoughts on that critique, both good and bad. But after some reflection, we’ve decided that it’s not fair to

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