Contributors

1 Abigail TRACY

"The Super Speaker," p. 96

"When I left Nancy Pelosi's office, the historical gravity of the moment really settled in," says Tracy, who has been writing about Congress and foreign policy for Vanity Fair's Hive since it launched in 2016. "Pelosi never wanted impeachment, but she seemed at peace with her decision."

2 Karen VALBY

"The Ballad of John & Chrissy," p. 74

"Some public people are even better than you hope them to be," says Valby, who profiled John Legend and Chrissy Teigen for this month's cover story. "They kept returning to subjects, even difficult ones, because they're interested in what each other has to say. I missed my plane, because I couldn't bear to leave the conversation."

3 Jason BELL

"Empire State of Mind," p. 86

Bell, the acclaimed British portrait photographer, shot the actor Edward Norton in crowded public places. "He seemed to enjoy that frisson as much as I did," Bell says, "It gave the shoot a fast sort of'smash and grab' energy, which he jokingly said had something in common with his directing style."

4 Marie BRENNER

"The Education of Billy Barr," p. 88

William Barr "seems to have an overdue need for father-son retribution," says Brenner, a V.F. writer at large and a producer of Where's My Roy Cohn? "Does he really think his father—a Catholic intellectual who quoted St. Thomas Aquinas—would approve of his son turning into the lackey for this president?"

5 Andre ACIMAN

"An American in Paris," p. 114

"My whole life is an excavation of various texts," says the author and professor of comparative literature at City University of New York. By contrast, it took only 14 months to write Find Me, the follow-up to his 2007 novel Call Me by Your Name, "It was rather hasty. But the characters have been living with me, and they've gotten old. And I was getting old."