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Who deserves to be HOTY?<\/p>\n
Every year, Houston proves it\u2019s much bigger than its skyline<\/a>. Someone opens a bookstore and gives out books for free. Someone forces a policy change. Someone renovates a movie theater plank by plank so a neighborhood can enjoy more local art.<\/p>\n For the third year running, we\u2019re pausing to notice\u2014modeled after Time\u2019s Person of the Year, we\u2019re naming a slate of Houstonians whose work this year left the city measurably better than they found it.<\/p>\n And just as we did last year, we\u2019re handing the ballot to you. Readers get to decide who earns the title of Houstonian of the Year 2026. Below, meet the finalists\u2014an anthropologist turned dinner-party diplomat<\/a>, a literary champion clocking out after three decades<\/a>, a councilmember who wouldn\u2019t let the AC debate go quiet, a chef who turned a James Beard Award speech<\/a> into a mic drop, a bookstore owner shelving free reads, and the volunteers who bought back a movie theater before it could be torn down. Cast your vote for who deserves it most.<\/p>\n Arthouse Houston<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s been a long road for Arthouse Houston, and it\u2019s not over yet. Led by director Maureen McNamara, the nonprofit grew out of the successful campaign to save the River Oaks Theatre, which reopened in 2024. It later turned its attention to the nearly 80-year-old Garden Oaks Theater<\/a> on N. Shepherd, threatened with demolition after its sale to a development firm for $7.1 million. Since February, the group has raised more than $2.8 million to buy and preserve the Art Deco cinema, with a closing expected after Labor Day and help along the way from Houston-born filmmakers Wes Anderson, whose Hobby Center benefit pulled in roughly $300,000 in a single night, and Richard Linklater. The real work is only getting started: According to a Houston Chronicle <\/a>report<\/a>,\u00a0an estimated $18 million, three-phase renovation will turn the theater into a full Arts & Film Center\u2014production studios, classrooms, a microcinema\u2014with a grand opening targeted for 2028. Until then, the marquee will run as a pop-up drive-in, a fitting placeholder for a group that keeps finding ways to keep the lights on.<\/p>\n Marlon Hall<\/a>, artist and anthropologist<\/p>\n Marlon Hall is much more than an artist<\/a>\u2014he\u2019s a curator of human experience. The cultural anthropologist, yoga instructor, and former pastor has spent the better part of a decade pulling carefully chosen strangers up to a table<\/a>, past the small talk and straight into the stuff that actually makes us human: our stories, our beliefs, our grief. He\u2019s hosted more than 300 of these dinners in Houston, Nairobi, Venice, and even Tulsa, where he seated descendants of both the victims and the perpetrators of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre at the same table to share a meal. This fall, he\u2019s taking the concept home for good, relocating to Nairobi National Park to open a human-development lodge\u2014bookstore, art studio, six cabins, and Houston chef Chris Williams cooking alongside him\u2014built entirely around his belief that we grow closer by sitting with our differences, not our sameness.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rich Levy, former director of Inprint Houston<\/a><\/p>\n Consider this a toast to more than three decades of deliberate work building Houston into a literary city. Levy spent 31 years as executive director of Inprint, officially stepping down this June<\/a> to retire after growing the organization from a single staff position into a nonprofit that runs more than 60 workshops a year and has hosted the likes of Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, and George Saunders on its stage. He fought to keep the celebrated Margarett Root Brown Reading Series priced at just $5 a ticket, insisting accessibility mattered more than what the market would bear. He also planted the seeds of the Poetry Buskers program, sending typewriter-toting grad students out to parks and public spaces around the city to write poems on demand. Now retiring to Paris, Levy leaves behind an organization and a literary reputation for Houston itself that no longer needs convincing to exist.<\/p>\n Sara Loperena, founder of the Book Cycle<\/a><\/p>\n Call her the bringer of books<\/a> during the city\u2019s ongoing budget blues. Since founding the Book Cycle in 2012, Loperena has run a simple mission out of a Second Ward warehouse: take in donated books and hand them back out to anyone who wants one, no cost and no catch. The original spot on Velasco Street has no air conditioning to speak of, which makes for rough summer browsing, but relief is coming soon. Loperena is currently working on moving Book Cycle to its new home at 6601 Sherman Street, with room for more programming and, mercifully, a working AC unit. As of press time, Loperena is still operating out of the original location on Velasco while beginning to build out the shop\u2019s future home.\u00a0<\/p>\n Councilmember Alejandra Salinas, At-Large Position 4<\/a><\/p>\n Thank her for ensuring Houstonians stay cool<\/a>\u2014literally. Elected in December 2025 as the first openly LGBTQ+ Latina ever to serve on Houston City Council, and the first Latina elected citywide in nearly 30 years, Salinas built her career as a litigator at Susman Godfrey, where she helped protect Harris County elections and secured a billion-dollar settlement for authors whose work was scraped by an AI company. In office, she\u2019s mounted the city\u2019s most vocal pushback yet on ICE activity<\/a>, pressing HPD publicly for answers after immigration agents killed longtime resident Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and telling frustrated constituents at an August 11 meeting, \u201cYou\u2019re not alone. You\u2019re not talking into the void.\u201d She also authored the ordinance, passed August 19, requiring every rental property in Houston to have working air conditioning\u2014no more skating by on window screens\u2014 and followed it up by giving away portable A\/C units to residents who needed relief now. It\u2019s the kind of governing that shows up in both the headlines and the electric bill.<\/p>\n Adrian Torres, chef of Maximo<\/a><\/p>\n At 27, Torres didn\u2019t just refresh the menu<\/a> at West University\u2019s Maximo\u2014he remade it in his own image, threading progressive Mexican technique through dishes like masa cornbread with chicatana butter and caviar and a brisket confit taco. Raised in Aldine, he found his love of cooking as a kid glued to Cake Boss, but his DACA status blocked him from his first-choice culinary program; he trained instead at San Jacinto College and cut his teeth under Hugo Ortega at Xochi before landing at the restaurant that would become Maximo. He stepped into the top job when the restaurant\u2019s founding chef stepped back in late 2023, and in 2026 became just the second Houston chef to bring home a national James Beard Award<\/a>, winning Emerging Chef. His acceptance speech didn\u2019t shy away from his immigration status: \u201cI refuse to let fear be the headline,\u201d he told the room. \u201cTonight the headline is that a brown kid from the North Side, raised by parents who sacrificed everything for a chance at a better life, is standing on this stage accepting one of the highest honors in this industry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who deserves to be HOTY? Every year, Houston proves it\u2019s much bigger than its skyline. 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