CONTRIBUTORS

John Richardson first met the painter Lucian Freud when they were both art students in London during World War II. "He already stood out as the most interesting personality and the most promising young artist of his generation," Richardson says. The two lost touch when Richardson went on to live in Provence and then New York, getting to know such artists as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ellsworth Kelly. But in the last decade they renewed their friendship, and in 1998, Richardson sat for Freud, an experience he writes about on page 204. Richardson is currently at work on a collection of essays, as well as the third volume of his celebrated Picasso biography.

In the last few years, contributing editor Leslie Bennetts's V.F. assignments have taken her to Africa (to interview photographer Peter Beard), to the Middle East (to profile Jordan's Queen Noor), and to Pakistan, for this month's feature on Imran and Jemima Khan. Her versatility dates back to her days as a reporter for The New York Times. In her 10 years with the paper, she covered national politics, metropolitan news, city hall, and cultural news, and contributed to the style page. "I don't like being restricted to a niche," says Bennetts.

For Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Buzz Bissinger, no story in his 25-year career has affected him as much as his investigation, on page 178, into the murder of U.S. Army soldier Barry Winchell. Bissinger found talking to Winchell's mother particularly moving. "She didn't lose a soldier, she lost a son," says Bissinger, who has three sons himself. Bissinger would like his story to help ensure that no other family experiences what the Winchells did. "I hope it helps change the policy on gays in the military," says Bissinger. "For a country like this to ask these soldiers to fight for freedoms that they don't possess is beyond me."

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Excerpted in this issue, In the Heart of the Sea (Viking), Nathaniel Philbrick's account of the 1820 Essex whaleship disaster, which inspired Moby-Dick, is a book he seemed destined to write. His uncle Charles Philbrick was a poet whose final book included a poem about the ship, and Philbrick's father, a professor of English who specialized in American maritime literature, often told young Nathaniel the classic tale of the Essex and "the whale that rammed the ship." A leading historian of Nantucket, Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of Away off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People and Abram's Eyes: The Native American Legacy of Nantucket Island.

Contributing editor Alan Deutschman left New York in 1992 to become Fortune's San Francisco correspondent—and the timing was perfect. "The tech boom was just beginning. It turned into the most fascinating beat of the 90s," says Deutschman, who wrote this month's eEstablishment list. "Silicon Valley boosters say it's like Florence during the Renaissance. I think that's an overstatement. But the cuisine in California is as good, and in terms of inventiveness it's an extraordinary time." Deutschman has just completed The Second Coming of Steve Jobs (Broadway Books), due out in September.

"Sometimes you just get lucky," says New York-based photographer Michel Comte, who for this issue captured Jemima and Imran Khan at their new London home. But Comte's work encompasses much more than images of the rich and famous. His new book, People and Places with No Name (Steidl), is a 400-page collection of his wartime pictures, which Comte began taking during the Gulf War. "I packed a knapsack, hopped a plane, and left the United States," he says. His next book, Aiko T., examines a day in the life of a geisha.

In addition to reviewing Michael Ondaatje's new novel and writing a Speed Dial on fashion doyenne Eleanor Lambert, Henry Alford fulfilled a personal mission in this issue. "I've been trying to get Airwick' into the magazine for a long time," he says, referring to a pet word that appears in his "Common Grounds" diagram on page 164. Alford is a co-host of the VH1 program Rock of Ages and a contributor to Mirth of a Nation (Harper Perennial), a biennial collection of American humor. His book Big Kiss (Villard), about his misadventures as a struggling actor, was published in March.