Contributors

"For having spent so much time in Hollywood, Natalie Portman is very unusual for a teenager, and unusual for an actress," says contributing editor Leslie Bennetts, who profiles the extraordinary young star in this issue. "She's the kind of teenager that people say doesn't exist in this day and age." In fact, Bennetts sometimes found it hard to believe that she was talking to a 17-year-old.

"I know a lot of 40-year-olds who are not nearly as mature as she is."

Before getting back to the third volume of his acclaimed biography,

A Life of Picasso, John Richardson is fine-tuning A Sorcerers Apprentice, a memoir of his life in a Provencal chateau with the celebrated collector Douglas Cooper, and the part they played in Picasso's entourage. In this issue, Richardson profiles Brice Marden, whom he describes as the greatest nonfigurative painter of his generation. "Brice's painterly obsession and addiction to hard work remind me of the giants of the school of Paris," Richardson says.

"Writing about times when lives are at stake is much closer to my heart than money and other stuff that I've written about," says special correspondent Bryan Burrougtl, who in this issue reports on the Sydney-Hobart yacht race, which turned tragic when a tumultuous storm hit. Burrough, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, says his fascination with true stories began at his grandmother's house. "She always had Reader's Digest, and I would read the real-life dramas. I wanted to write them.

And this was my chance."

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After the first reports about the mysterious Gulf War syndrome surfaced, in 1991, Gary Matsumoto took a personal interest. "I was a foreign correspondent for NBC during Desert Storm," says Matsumoto. "I began to ask myself, Is my body a ticking time bomb? Am I going to get sick?" Fortunately, Matsumoto did not, but last year he started investigating the possibility that an armysupplied vaccine was an actual cause of Gulf War syndrome. The results of his investigation begin on page 82.

For contributing editor Michael Shnayerson, downfalls are always more interesting than success stories. "They're a challenge to character." So he watched keenly as publisher Dick Snyder, deposed at Simon & Schuster, tried a comeback with Golden Books, only to stumble. "He's had to admit to serious misjudgments," observes Shnayerson, whose profile of Snyder begins on page 110. "But he has, and in agreeing to discuss them with Vanity Fair, he's been pretty game."

Although she didn't realize it, Krista Smith was a shoo-in during her job interview at Vanity Fair in 1987.

"My resume really only said that I spoke Italian and had worked on Gary Hart's campaign," recalls Smith, who grew up in Denver. "But Vanity Fair was right in the middle of a huge expose by Gail Sheehy on Gary Hart." Two weeks later, Smith began working as a fact checker on the story. She moved through the ranks and in 1993 was promoted to West Coast editor.

Her position entails covering the entertainment industry from all angles: producing shoots, writing about celebrities, traveling to film festivals, and watching a constant stream of movies.

Contributing artist Hilary Knight admits that he is "very pro-pug, because of Eloise," which he illustrated. But he was thrilled to see a six-pound papillon named Kirby take "Best in Show" at the Westminster Dog Show. Knight, whose illustrations of the event appear on page 142, was at the edge of the ring for the judges' final look at the dogs. "When the papillon came out," Knight recalls, "it was like looking at a rock star." This month, Simon & Schuster will publish Eloise: The Absolutely Essential Edition.