September 2018

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A Brief History of Odd Food

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Mimi Swartz

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Nerd Tech

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September 2018

FALL FASHION New Adventures in Old Montrose

“Just as on St. Marks Place, Montrose’s (cracked and buckled) sidewalks will always be free.”

– john nova lomax

Exclusive!

Mary Kay’s Great-Granddaughter’s Texas-Size Spa

Plus From Cold Brew to Container Houses: Cool Stuff Made Here

INTERVIEW

DOING IT WRITE

As her first book since Enron hits shelves, celebrated scribe Mimi Swartz reflects on her fascinating journey from young paralegal to Houston’s first lady of letters.

By Ed Nawotka, Photo by Jhane Hoang

Superb writer Mimi Swartz, a longtime Heights resident, is an executive editor of Texas Monthly and contributor to The New York Times Magazine and, perhaps, simultaneously Houston’s most effective critic and booster. In long-form TM pieces — like her recent one on the absurd, nationaloutrage-generating drama over a West U teen’s Trump tee — to her 2004 book about the Enron scandal, she has proved consistently articulate about Houston’s foibles and fascinations. She deconstructs them fastidiously, with endless hours of reporting, no small detail left unnoted, and then puts them back together again, in a disarming narrative style that feels a bit like a Saturday morning conversation over coffee with your next-door neighbor. She’s the benevolent queen of making it look easy. Swartz’s new book, Ticker, which tells the story of Dr. O.H. “Bud” Frazier and the creation of the artificial heart at the Texas Medical Center, and later its trailblazing Texas Heart Institute, just hit.

50 | houstoncitybook.com

You were born in San Antonio and then went to college in Massachusetts. How’d you end up in Houston? It was after I graduated from this hippie college called Hampshire and I was unemployed that my mom — who thought I should go to law school — found me a job as a paralegal here in Houston.

At the time, in 1976, it made sense to move here because the law firm was paying a living wage and the city was starting to boom. It was a fun time when it was changing from just being a large city in Texas to an international oil capital.

When people talk about that period of time in Texas, they often refer to the Cosmic Cowboy scene in Austin, or the TV show Dallas. What was special about Houston then? It was fascinating and the city was a lot of fun, in part because of the cast of characters. Maxine Messenger was covering society for the Houston Chronicle and everyone ate at the old Tony’s on Post Oak. Lynn Wyatt