CONTRIBUTORS

Andrew Davies

Devotees of the Masterpiece series on PBS will be familiar with the work of British writer Andrew Davies, whose award-winning television screenplays have enlivened classics from Charles Dickens's Bleak House to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In the V.F. Portrait on page 80, Davies spotlights the longtime executive producer of Masterpiece, Rebecca Eaton. "I had her notes on my scripts for years and years," he says. Davies's cinematic credits include the popular (and Austen-inspired) Bridget Jones films.

Sally Bedell Smith

As contributing editor Sally Bedell Smith watched her husband chat with Queen Elizabeth II about a horse race, she says, she witnessed "the merry private side we rarely see in her very proper public persona." Smith herself has spent the past three years getting to know the Queen in her research for Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch (Random House), adapted on page 94. The book comes out January 10, in time to mark Her Majesty's 60th year on the throne. Appropriately, on the windowsill next to Smith's writing desk sits a solar-powered Elizabeth II figurine, waving to her on sunny days.

Pico Iyer

In his many books on travel in the age of global movement, Pico Iyer has reported from North Korea and Easter Island, from LAX and Yemen. In his first piece for Vanity Fair ("Heroes of the Hot Zone," on page 68), Iyer issues a dispatch from his home of almost 25 years, Japan, where he journeyed to Fukushima, the heart of the country's post-tsunami nuclear crisis, alongside radiation expert Dr. Robert Gale. With Gale, Iyer says, "I got to meet workers who spoke about their most intimate concerns as they surely wouldn't have with anyone else." Iyer's newest book, The Man Within My Head— about Graham Greene, hauntedness, and fathers—is out next month from Alfred A. Knopf.

James Nachtwey

This month, pre-eminent photojournalist James Nachtwey teams with Pico Iyer in Fukushima. "Japan is haunted by its relationship with nuclear power," Nachtwey says. For the past three decades, he has captured images of injustice, conflict, and change from all over the world. Nachtwey's contributions toward peace will be recognized on February 11, when he is awarded the Dresden Prize. His previous honors include two World Press Photo awards, seven Magazine Photographer of the Year awards, and five Robert Capa Gold Medals.