
A Writer Revisits His Search for His Grandfather’s Darkest Secrets
Author John Phillip Santos’s 2010 “Tejano elegy” explores family secrets that reveal “the deepest mysteries of being human.”
As Texas Monthly approaches its fiftieth anniversary, in February 2023, each week we will highlight an important story from our past—including true crime tales, riveting political writing, prescient cultural reporting, and more—and offer some perspective on it.
Author John Phillip Santos’s 2010 “Tejano elegy” explores family secrets that reveal “the deepest mysteries of being human.”
Author Casey Gerald reflects on the creative process behind his August 2021 cover profile of the Fort Worth R&B singer.
The author of Goodbye to a River and two-time National Book Award finalist helped create the magazine’s Country Notes column.
Long before quizzes littered the internet, TM’s Anne Dingus delighted readers with a hundred-question series that doubled as a “CliffsNotes of Texas history.”
The magazine’s back-page columnist explains the subtle shifts in his “Fine Advice and Keen Observations,” from 2007 through today.
Attica Locke looks back on her 2012 essay weighing her Houston pride against the fact that “there are things about the state that just don’t work for me.”
A writer looks back on his 2018 cover story on Myrtis Dightman Sr., “the Jackie Robinson of Rodeo,” who broke the sport’s color line.
Cat Cardenas’s 2021 essay made a poignant case about the mistakes Selena never got to make—and how they would have deepened our love for her.
National Book Award finalist Domingo Martinez was optimistic about Musk and SpaceX in 2016. Now, he says, “it feels like we sold our souls.”
The writer of an oddball 2016 crime story recalls emailing with an accountant who skimmed $17 million from Corsicana’s Collin Street Bakery.
In reporting how Candy Montgomery came to murder her lover’s wife, the authors recall trying to capture a “time and place in Texas history.”
The career criminal was found dead after a two-day manhunt in East Texas. A writer recalls reporting on the circumstances of Haynes’s death.
A writer remembers how a chance conversation at a food festival led to her classic 2014 oral history on Southwestern cuisine.
The author of a 2014 Texas Monthly profile of King George explains why it was among the few stories in his career that made him cry while writing.
Sterry Butcher on the path that led her to move to Marfa and find God “in the details” while writing about rural Texas.
Pamela Colloff reflects on her 2010 story about the shoddy police work and prosecutorial misconduct that put an innocent man on death row.
Author S. C. Gwynne calls his 2009 profile of the pirate-obsessed former Texas Tech coach part of the “golden era” of his journalism career.
John Bloom, a.k.a. Joe Bob Briggs, discusses his 2004 opus on the making of the slasher classic and the New York bias against a Texas original.
The Texas Monthly writer reflects on the run-down home that led him to write “Still Life,” about John McClamrock, the boy who could not move.
A man approached Cecilia Ballí and asked, “Are you looking for work?” It shook her—and helped her grasp the danger in early-aughts Juárez.
Will Van Overbeek's images, with words by Oscar-winning screenwriter and Texas A&M alum and proud Aggie Al Reinert, were "good bull."
The musician, author, and columnist needed an idea. Texas Monthly’s then–editor in chief said, “Make something up.” The rest is history.
When Texas Monthly covered Enron's fall in 2001, we wondered if the company was an outlier or the new normal. There's no longer any question.
In 1982, Dick J. Reavis chronicled the first government-led lethal injection in world history—and the last moments of Charlie Brooks's life.
Twenty-two years ago, a Texas Monthly writer heard about a Houston DJ whose slowed-down mixes had become the sound of the city.
Cecilia Ballí recalls reporting on her family’s legal victory over the lawyer who swindled the Ballís out of lucrative land rights on Padre Island.
The writer looks back on his 1998 reporting on an unforgettable murder plot that inspired the 2011 Richard Linklater film ‘Bernie.’
Patricia Sharpe recalls the smoked meats and mileage that went into Texas Monthly’s first-ever Top 50 barbecue list in May 1997.
Her 1996 photo essay captured the joy and vitality of Andrew, Luke, and Owen Wilson's charmed youth in Dallas.
When a family doctor spoke out about insurance companies ruining his practice, few expected his appeal would still resonate 27 years later.
Even when Bush was a complete political newcomer, Burka could see his potential to change Texas and usher in a yet-to-end Republican dynasty.
Texas Monthly writer Jan Jarboe Russell on profiling the larger-than-life Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt.
The Beaumont photographer zeroed in on the dignity of East Texas residents in his 1989 Texas Monthly photo essay.
Mimi Swartz reflects on her deep dive into Houston’s breast-implant boom and its larger-than-life profiteers.
Lawrence Wright gives us the story behind his Texas Monthly story on Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
“Your article may be an epitaph,” the then-president of the Houston Audubon Society told the writer.
John Davidson’s 1982 article on Enrico di Portanova was everything a high-society profile should be.
Texas Monthly writer Michael Ennis’s profile of museum director Walter Hopps took readers inside the Menil Collection’s founding.
No one had a deeper understanding of Texas power—its heroes and villains, its uses and abuses—than Paul.
Bobby Sakowitz dressed Houston’s most stylish through the seventies and eighties boom years. Then things went bust.
Joe Nocera’s pitched profile of then-little-known T. Boone Pickens got him unprecedented access to Pickens’s 1982 attempt to take over Cities Service.
Jan Jarboe Russell reflects on an exciting moment in H-E-B’s (and Texas Monthly’s) history.
The legendary cattle empire had been largely closed off from the outside world until the magazine’s founding editor gained access to King Ranch.
William Martin’s journey from Rice professor to Billy Graham expert began with a simple assignment, one that would alter his life for decades to come.
Former staff writer Nicholas Lemann remembers how Exxon refused to cooperate with his story—and why that made all the difference.
Over several years, Richard West spent two months in seven Texas locales. His reporting eventually won the National Magazine Award.
Greg Curtis’s first story about Sam Corey was supposed to be a colorful human interest piece, but in some ways it was actually the beginning of a heinous murder.
He was the magazine’s first big hire and—over the next few decades—delivered some of its most memorable stories.
A popular columnist embeds herself inside the exclusive world of girls’ summer camps.
A pair of Texas Monthly writers chronicle an emerging scene that would end up defining a city and changing American music forever.