WILLIAM D. COHAN

In "The Devil to Pay," on page 110, Special Correspondent William D. Cohan examines billionaire Eddie Lampert's controversial efforts to salvage Sears and Kmart much-diminished brands that have faced particularly hard times in the Amazon era. "Lampert is an intellectual and a true believer" says Cohan, to whom the retail mogul gave his first in-depth interview in 15 years. "An investor with a smaller mind probably would have pulled the plug already."

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

"A photo-essay can seem too intimate, but Lena was fearless about opening up her life for our photographs," says Contributing Photographer Annie Leibovitz. Lor this month's cover shoot, Lena Waithe, the Emmy-winning writer and actor showed Leibovitz around her Los Angeles apartment, including her resplendent shoe closet. Leibovitz also photographed Jane Londa for the V.F. Portrait on page 90.

JACQUELINE WOODSON

In "Ready for Lena," on page 78, National Book Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson highlights many of the formative influences—both cultural and personal she shares with her subject, screenwriter-producer-actor Lena Waithe. "Writing about Lena felt, like coming home to my younger self," says Woodson, whose new young-adult novel, Harbor Me, will be out this summer. "When I found out it was going to be the cover story, I was like, 'Yas! That's exactly where she belongs.'"

MARK SELIGER

What began as Mark Seliger's bold experiment is now a much-anticipated tradition, and the photographer returned for the fifth year in a row to create, with Instagram, his instant-portrait studio inside the Vanity Fair Oscar party. As the Hollywood elite streamed in for their portraits, which begin on page 62, Seliger captured the glamour and the surprising intimacy of the biggest parly of the year. "There's a beauty to the spontaneity of it," he says. A book of Seliger's most iconic portraiture comes out in May.

CLARA BINGHAM

Fifty years after the Columbia University student uprising, journalist Clara Bingham tracked down 25 of the landmark protest s participants to assemble the oral history on page 118. "The Parkland high-school shooting took place when I was nearing the end of my interviews,'" says Bingham. "These brave high-scliool students, who had the moral authority that adults could never muster, took to the streets. I was watching history repeat itself." Binghams book Witness to the-Revolution came out in 2016.