CONTRIBUTORS

A letter from Lisl Auman was the only catalyst HUNTER S. THOMPSON (left) needed to launch a campaign to free the 28-year-old, who is now serving a life sentence for a murder she didn't commit. "It was too ugly to ignore," Thompson says. "I know from dangerous experience that you can't fight a corrupt system alone. It helps to have the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers on your side like I do. If you don't fight, you'll be taken within the system. I owe it to who I am. This is what I do." He enlisted contributing editor MARK SEAL, who had met Thompson in 2002 while writing about Aspen for V.F., to help uncover the facts of Auman's case. "He was the activist and I was the journalist," Seal says. "It was like falling into a Hunter S. Thompson world. It had all the elements—sex, guns, drugs, and rock 'n' roll." Seal recently completed a screenplay about a 1960s boxer who survived a shooting and went on to fight Muhammad Ali. Hey Rube, a collection of Thompson's ESPN.com columns, will be published in July by Simon & Schuster, and his books The Rum Diary and The Curse of Lono are being made into films.

Contributing editor ROBERT SAM ANSON is something of an authority on the post-White House lives of American presidents. His 1984 book, Exile, covered Richard Nixon's first decade out of office, and in this issue, beginning on page 172, he reports on Bill Clinton's activities since January 20, 2001. "I developed sympathy for what both men went through," says Anson, who identifies a number of parallels between them—high intelligence, political fervor, and experience with special prosecutors—but also some key differences: "Clinton doesn't have Nixon's cynicism. He also cares desperately about his legacy. He's very calculating on the one hand, but he really does want to do the right thing."

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As the creative force behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, LARRY DAVID has had a major influence on the culture over the past decade and a half, but the political climate is something else entirely. David, who takes a unique approach to the upcoming presidential campaign on page 124, nevertheless insists that his political credentials are sound— especially by contemporary standards—and so are his instincts. For instance, on this year's much-discussed season finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm, he refused to sleep with a woman because she was a Republican. "Of course, in real life," he adds, "I would sleep with a Holocaust denier if the opportunity ever presented itself."

Investigating rumors that world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking had been the victim of domestic abuse, contributing editor JUDY BACHRACH discovered that pride can sometimes win out over self-preservation. "He is often described as the most intelligent man in the world, yet he chose a woman who is suspected of abuse," Bachrach says. "Acknowledging that he made a big mistake would, I am told, literally kill him." Faced with Hawking's vehement denials of the abuse allegations, the police have dropped the case, citing an absence of evidence. "Hawking is Cambridge University's biggest ornament," says Bachrach. "You can understand why authorities might tread softly."

To figure out why none of Hollywood's modern contenders measures up to Cary Grant, the subject of his column this month (see page 108), contributing editor JAMES WOLCOTT started by "looking at the way he moved on-screen compared with the way people move on-screen today. He had a pent-up energy that gave him a certain tension actors don't really have now." This summer, Miramax Books will publish Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants: The Looting of News in a Time of Terror, which evolved out of Wolcott's V.F. columns and shows "how the media just lay down like a carpet for the Bush administration, and now we're paying for it."

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For this issue, contributing editor VICKY WARD probes the fallout from "an audacious idea—namely, to attach a renowned architect like Richard Meier to a residential building in a part of New York that isn't particularly known for its glitz appeal." She adds, "On another level this is an old-fashioned farce about what happens when things go wrong for a bunch of really rich people who used to want to live in Park Avenue penthouses with endless layers of protection, but now want to live in goldfish bowls." Still, Ward says, she has faith that "these problems will be sorted out and New York will be left with two beautiful examples of contemporary architecture. We should be grateful to Calvin Klein and company for going on a Star Trek voyage."

KURT MARKUS never went to school to learn photography. Instead, the Montana native has perfected his craft over 30 years of hands-on experience. For this issue, Markus shot a group who, like him, chose an "untraditional" path: the young men attending tiny Deep Springs College, in California. "Deep Springs makes you glad that everything is not cookie-cutter in this world," he says. After four days on campus, Markus developed an admiration for the students' humor and dedication. "To be thrown into a situation right out of high school where you perform tasks like milking cows, irrigating, and governing yourself in an intimate setting, away from the opposite sex—it almost has monastic qualities. It truly is a unique experience for these smart young men."

As copy production manager, ANDERSON TEPPER finds himself perfectly positioned between Vanity Fair's designers and its editors— and, fortunately, able to translate between the two. "Being the link between the different departments is a wonderful way to see the whole magazine come together," says Tepper, who has been with V.F. for six years. Tepper has also written about books for The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, The Village Voice, Salon, and Time Out New York, and he belongs to the advisory board of the Housing Works Used Book Cafe, for which he helps organize reading events to benefit the homeless. "I definitely see V.F. as part of New York's cultural life, not just reporting on it," he says.

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