Magazines could kill a man, it turns out.
My request for a complete print archive of Texas Monthly in my office seemed simple. Problem is, magazine storage is on a whole other floor of the building. Each month is in its own box. Then there’s the sheer weight of them. By my math, the archive weighs a crushing 375 pounds. I needed stronger anchors for my bookshelves. One second you’re reaching for October ’83, the next second Texas Monthly needs a new editor.
The complete archive of every issue from the 53 years of Texas Monthly represents a lot to me. Quality, for one. And constancy. And, perhaps most of all, effort. We spend—and here I search for the precise word—an unbelievable amount of time making each print issue of Texas Monthly. We also produce podcasts, TV shows, and events, and publish about fifty online-only stories each month. But sentence for sentence, nothing we do receives more attention from the staff. Even in 2026.
Having the archive within reach means I’m doing a lot more reading from it. Someone will mention a story to me, and instead of looking for it on our website, I find the print magazine, read the story there, and then flip through the rest of the issue. What a treat. What an inspiration.
I’m becoming more and more equipped to answer the question “What are your favorite stories?” We’ve been asking lots of people this question for our “In the Archives” video series, in which interesting people peruse a small storage closet with shelves containing every issue of the magazine and pick their favorite covers and stories. We started it as a pop-up booth at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. (It’s even harder to haul the entire archive to a park in the middle of Austin in the heat.)
Someone recently had the bright idea to ask me to head into the closet and expound upon my favorites. I’m filming the segment tomorrow, and I have no idea what I’m going to pick. My go-to answer is Skip Hollandsworth’s “Still Life,” about a paralyzed Dallas high school football player and the mother who devotes her life to his care. There’s no better piece of magazine writing. But what about Mimi Swartz’s “Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, Wives”? What about Michael Hall’s “The Juror Who Found Herself Guilty”? What about Katy Vine’s “The Positively True Adventures of the Kilgore Rangerette–Kidnapping Mom”?
What about Gary Cartwright’s 1973 profile “The Lonely Blues of Duane Thomas,” about the enigmatic Dallas Cowboys running back?
What about Aaron Parsley’s harrowing story of surviving last summer’s July 4 floods, published in the August issue? What about “ ‘Stay Strong, My Brother’ ” by Elliott Woods, which came out a few months later? I’m neglecting to mention hundreds of great stories, in part because I haven’t read them yet.
There are two dirty secrets about Texas Monthly editors in chief:
1. We are not intimately familiar with every microregion in Texas.
2. We have not read every feature story in Texas Monthly.
These hold true for everyone, of course. (Though if you have read every story in Texas Monthly and you are intimately familiar with every microregion in Texas, I want to know you.) I see our archive the way Americans once saw Texas: as a frontier of opportunity (and danger!).
The issues on my shelves are looking at me askance, wondering what I’m waiting for. My favorite story is in there somewhere. So is yours.
This article originally appeared in the March 2026 issue of Texas Monthly with the headline “The Magazines—They’re Moving . . . They’re Alive!” Subscribe today.