Downsizing Houston
If the crash that followed the boom hasn’t exactly been our fault, the result has been that same sad sense that maybe we’ll never have fun again.
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.
If the crash that followed the boom hasn’t exactly been our fault, the result has been that same sad sense that maybe we’ll never have fun again.
By Mimi Swartz
Trade secrets and true tales from Lynn Wyatt, she of the famously fabulous parties, glamorous couture gowns, rich and entertaining pals (e.g., Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol), and legendary whiskey laugh.
By Mimi Swartz
I had no clue about the amount of magic Texas held. Texas had a persona all its own, and I was proud to be a little smidgen part of it.
By Mimi Swartz
Why are the UT regents letting Galveston’s only hospital die?
By Mimi Swartz
After Hurricane Katrina, Rhonda Tavey selflessly opened her Houston home to a New Orleans evacuee and five of her children. She fed the kids, bathed them, and grew to love them so much that when their mother tried to take them back to Louisiana, she wouldn’t let them go.
By Mimi Swartz
Here comes the story of the hurricane.
By Mimi Swartz
The Menil removed "The Art Guys Marry a Plant," a controversial performance piece, from its collection, a move that is stirring up Houston's art scene once again.
By Mimi Swartz
In one year the eyes of the world will turn to Dallas's Dealey Plaza for the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Is the city ready?
By Mimi Swartz
How the 50th anniversary party for the Texas Heart Institute was really a glimpse into the Houston that once was.
By Mimi Swartz
Sending a Texan off into the world—and hoping he’ll return.
By Mimi Swartz
In 2011 the Legislature slashed family planning funds, passed a new sonogram law, and waged an all-out war on Planned Parenthood that has dramatically shifted the state’s public health priorities. In the eighteen months since then, the conflict has continued to simmer in the courts, on the campaign trail, and
By Mimi Swartz
John Friend, the founder of Anusara yoga, recently found himself engulfed in a scandal that has piqued the national media's interest. Mimi Swartz reports on the Texas takeaway and what this means for the homegrown practice.
By Mimi Swartz
The Supreme Court rejected the ex-Enron CEO's latest appeal, a move that is hardly surprising to most Houstonians.
By Mimi Swartz
For a quarter of a century, the Art Guys, Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing, have been Houston’s master provocateurs, stirring up discussion with their wacky, thoughtful, and tenaciously marketed “social sculptures.” But have they finally gone too far?
By Mimi Swartz
Houston has always prided itself as a city that barrels forward into the future, and operates without memory, regret or nostalgia. But when developers began messing with the historic River Oaks Shopping Center, Houstonians raised their hackles.
By Mimi Swartz
Ten years ago this month, the company that once dominated Houston collapsed in a cloud of debt. But its ghost still haunts the city—and America.
By Mimi Swartz
Rick Perry’s stumbles on the national stage have inadvertently highlighted the weakness of his opposition back home—Texas Democrats.
By Mimi Swartz
Amid all the drink tickets, bikini-clad hostesses, and outrageous displays of wealth at the world’s largest expo for independent oilmen, I was determined to get some answers about the future of the business.
By Mimi Swartz
Trey Speegle on paint-by-numbers art.
By Mimi Swartz
After a year on the job, the superintendent of the largest school district in Texas is loathed and loved in equal measure. Does that mean he’s doing his job?
By Mimi Swartz
Before he was fighting for the governorship of the second-largest state in the country, Bill White was just a kid from Texas.
By Mimi Swartz
The debut of Enron, the play, on Broadway might be the perfect time to settle a question that’s been bothering Houston: Does Jeff Skilling need a new trial?
By Mimi Swartz
Every year thousands of women are smuggled into the United States and forced to work as prostitutes. Many of them end up in Houston, in massage parlors and spas. Most of them will have a hard time ever getting out.
By Mimi Swartz
Annise Parker, the newly elected mayor of Houston, is ready to discuss any of the challenges facing her city. That will happen as soon as everyone else is ready to stop talking about her sexuality.
By Mimi Swartz
On the day my mother died, I found myself in the place that, more than any other, had defined our relationship: her closet.
By Mimi Swartz
The Houston Chronicle’s loss is CultureMap’s gain—Shelby Hodge.
By Mimi Swartz
NAME: John Friend | AGE: 50 | HOME: The Woodlands | QUALIFICATIONS: Founder of Anusara, an increasingly popular style of hatha yoga / Has taught yoga for almost thirty years / Author of numerous yoga books, CDs, and DVDs, including Anusara Yoga 101 and Growing a Lotus• I was precocious
By Mimi Swartz
The Houston mayor’s race gets interesting (finally).
By Mimi Swartz
It’s time for Texas to start taking better care of people like Darla Deese, a developmentally disabled woman who has spent most of her life in our harrowing state schools.
By Mimi Swartz
What to do in humid Houston during the summer? If you’re Lynn Wyatt, you don’t sweat it and ask a couple dozen of your closest acquaintances to a book signing party for your dear, dear friend Candy Spelling, mother of Tori and author of Stories From Candyland.
By Mimi Swartz
Location: HoustonWhat You’ll Need: Open mind, credit cardI know that the idea of a weekend getaway in Houston—in summer, no less—might strike some people as cuckoo. (Oh, yeah? And how about Pittsburgh in February?) To those folks I can only say I’m sorry—for their ignorance. I have
By Mimi Swartz
Cerón on styling socialites’ hair.
By Mimi Swartz
If you need an example of how the world can change in an instant, here is a small blow by blow.
By Mimi Swartz
Maybe the collapse of the Stanford Group isn’t Enron, but Houston wasn’t about to be left out of the financial scandals.
By Mimi Swartz
Why Texans stand out in crowds.
By Mimi Swartz
The once forgotten corridor emerges as an eclectic enclave.
By Mimi Swartz
Only yesterday, it seems, my mother was taking me to visit colleges. A second later, here I am, enduring this rite of passage from the other side.
By Mimi Swartz
Most American consumers understand that the invasion of Iraq has contributed to the skyrocketing price of oil. But there’s another reason why we’re paying so much per barrel and gallon: The countries where crude is available in abundance are increasingly dangerous places to operate. Russell Spell, of Conroe, can tell
By Mimi Swartz
Summer vacation is right around the corner, but that doesn’t mean you should panic. We’ve rounded up 68 of our favorite things to do with your toddlers, teens, and every kid in between. Dance the hokey pokey. Rope a horse. Eat way too many hot dogs. Zip down a waterslide.
1. Yes, Lee’s Sandwiches hails from California, but that just means it’s a spot where you can experience Melting Pot America in its myriad glory. Your order is called in Vietnamese and English; it’s a little like being in a train station in seventies Saigon. The baguettes and croissants
By Mimi Swartz
How Houston’s rich got to be the same as you and me—that is, boring.
By Mimi Swartz
In the right light, the ornery octogenarian oilman’s guilty plea can be seen as a victory: After all, he won’t spend the rest of his natural life in jail. But the fact is, he couldn’t beat the rap—and he knew it.
By Mimi Swartz
True-life tales from the files of one of Houston’s top divorce lawyers.
By Mimi Swartz
Westheimer Road, Houston
By Mimi Swartz
Anna Nicole Smith died as she lived: as a bit of tabloid ephemera, sandwiched between a love-crazed astronaut and Britney Spears’s new do. And that’s exactly where she belonged.
By Mimi Swartz
Party tricks from Jackson Hicks.
By Mimi Swartz
Dan Patrick is causing nervous breakdowns of various size and duration—and he’s not even in the Texas Senate yet.
By Mimi Swartz
West Nineteenth, Houston.
By Mimi Swartz
Houston’s Katrina hangover.
By Mimi Swartz
Hot enough for you?
By Mimi Swartz