CONTRIBUTORS

Aaron Sorkin

Back in 2009, acclaimed screenwriter and playwright Aaron Sorkin received the following e-mail: "Sorkin. Fincher. I'm directing The Social Network. Can I come over?" Thus began a collaboration with filmmaker David Fincher that would yield four Golden Globes, three Oscars, and a friendship. On page 212, Sorkin profiles Fincher, whose adaptation of Stieg Larsson's seismic The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opens December 21. Also featured are photographs by Annie Leibovitz, for whom Fincher and Sorkin sat together for our March 2011 Hollywood Issue. Words by Sorkin and images by Leibovitz—a winning combination.

Sarah Ellison

Rupert Murdoch's adult children "were raised on News Corp.," Sarah Ellison says. "They talked about it around the breakfast table." In "The Rules of Succession," on page 204, Ellison considers the toll taken on the family by News Corp.'s phone-hacking scandal. "Murdoch has made his career out of disrupting the different businesses he's in," she explains. "It's ironic that the greatest disruption he might experience is the one inside his own family." Ellison has written extensively about News Corp. for Vanity Fair and in her book on the Dow Jones takeover, War at the Wall Street Journal (Mariner), now out in paperback.

Charles Moore

Charles Moore first met Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, while he was editor of the British weekly The Spectator. Moore is now Thatcher's authorized biographer and writes about her legacy in "The Invincible Mrs. Thatcher," on page 236. "She was the first and only female prime minister," he says. "This makes her story much more interesting than that of other modern British politicians." Previously the editor of The Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Telegraph, Moore is still writing Thatcher's biography. "At her request it can't appear in her lifetime," says Moore, "and she's not allowed to read it."

Mark Bowden

The Battle of Wanat, one of the bloodiest conflicts in Afghanistan, first came to contributing editor Mark Bowden's attention when he was reporting last year's profile of General David Petraeus for Vanity Fair. "Colonel Bill Ostlund, who figures largely in this story, mentioned the battle to me when I was interviewing him about Petraeus," says Bowden, who writes about what happened at Wanat in "Echoes from a Distant Battlefield," on page 214. "I asked Petraeus about it, and all he said was 'It's really a sad story.' That piqued my curiosity." Bowden's latest book, Worm: The First Digital World War, was published this fall by Grove/Atlantic.

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Cullen Murphy

After 5 years as Vanity Fair's editorat-large, and more than 20 as managing editor at The Atlantic Monthly before that,

Cullen Muiphy knows the magazine world. "Most magazines provide readers with a particular neighborhood,''

Muiphy says. " Vanity Fair offers an entire city." This month, the pieces he edited cover ground from the mountains of Afghanistan (Mark Bowden's "Echoes from a Distant Battlefield") to the media boardrooms of London and New York (Sarah Ellison's "The Rules of Succession"). His new book, God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World, will be published in January by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Mario Sorrenti

Mario Sorrenti has photographed stunning actresses from Catherine Deneuve and Julia Roberts to Anne Hathaway and Julianne Moore, but he felt particularly comfortable with Scarlett Johansson at Pennsylvania's Elkins Estate for this month's cover story (page 194). "Aside from being a beautiful woman and fun to be around," Sorrenti says, "Scarlett is great to shoot because she can make that transition from actress to model with ease." A collection of his personal photographs, Draw Blood for Proof will be published by Steidl this month.

Punch Hutton

To call Punch Hutton a Renaissance woman would be an understatement. In addition to curating, editing, and laying out Fanfair and Fairground, the magazine's global cultural pages, she's recently launched Punch Shifts, a day-to-night collection of eight shift dresses. In this issue, the V.F. deputy editor presents the much-anticipated annual gift guide (page 112). "For nearly a year, we source an eclectic array of items from all over the world," Hutton says. "I tend toward luxe pieces, great design, and extraordinary necessities."

David Harris

This month, David Harris, who has been designing Vanity Fair since 1989, will become the magazine's first design editor-at-large. With Graydon Carter, he crafted the award-winning look that has been replicated all over the world.

"The most rewarding part of what I do is working with the artists," he says, "photographers like Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts—whom I miss still— Robert Risko, and Edward Sorel, who is a god in illustration." Harris has overseen the creation of

more than 100 special issues, including the series of 20 covers for the special Africa issue, and designed the book covers for Vanity Fear's Hollywood, Vanity Fear's Proust Questionnaire, and The Great Hangover. His work has been recognized by the American Society of Magazine Editors, the Society of Publication Designers, and the Society of Illustrators.

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Ted Mann

The experience of taking ayahuasca, the Amazonian hallucinogen, was not an entirely positive one for Ted Mann, who writes about it in "Magnificent Visions" (page 156). "There's no possible way anyone could or would take ayahuasca for pleasure," he says. Mann started his working life as an editor and writer at the long-gone humor magazine National Lampoon before moving on to write and produce several movies and television shows, earning seven Emmy nominations in the process. He is currently producing a movie, The Sunflower Boys, about the nine weeks Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin spent together in Arles, France. "Like the ayahuasca story, it's both funny and monstrously sad," he says.

Chris Rovzar

Digital editor Chris Rovzar thinks of Vanity Fair's Web site as the magazine's "younger, faster, more irreverent sibling." The 30-year-old Rovzar recently joined VF.com as editor after four years at New York, where he guided the development of its seminal blog Daily Intel. "VF.com gets to take all the wonderful content from the print edition and then layer on original Web features, including commentary on the day's news, culture reviews, gorgeous slide shows, exclusive reportage, and more," says Rovzar. "It's a privileged position. Like most younger siblings, we're totally spoiled."

Peter Biskind

Contributing editor Peter Biskind first met the then 19-year-old Scarlett Johansson on the set of Match Point in 2004. "Unlike a lot of actors who seem to be afraid of their own shadows when you put a recorder in front of them, she was outspoken and frank," he said. "It was very refreshing." Biskind is currently working on his seventh book, The Eve of Destruction: Adventures in Extreme Culture, which he says is "a look at the end of the world through the prism of pop culture." It will be published by Metropolitan Books in 2013.

Rebecca Sacks

Spotlighting the high-kicking Radio City Music Hall Rockettes ("Rockette Science," on page 209) came naturally to Rebecca Sacks. "My talented cousin Ally Sacks is dancing in this year's Christmas Spectacular," she says, "so my entire family has been looking forward to the show since August." Rebecca is a frequent contributor to the VF Daily blog. A former VF intern, she started working as the assistant to senior articles editor Dana Brown in 2010 and recently began editing the Contributors section. ("I approve this note," she says.)