Contributors

EdwardKINSELLA III

"EMPIRE STATE OF MIND," P. 76

"It felt right to have a dark, gritty, and pushed-back feeling," says the illustrator, who used dry-brushed ink and liquid charcoal for his portrait of Steve Bannon. Kinsella's mixed-media work, created in his St. Louis studio, has been exhibited worldwide.

AliWINSTON

"THE VICIOUS CIRCLE," P. 90

"Contemporary journalism treats extremism as episodic—we switch off after the sentence is passed and the prison doors shut—but that's the environment where such ideologies are incubated and propagated," says Winston, who has been investigating neofascism's global revival since 2017.

PattiWILSON

"FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES," P. 42

Stylist Wilson, who calls her time working with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande "nothing short of magical," likes to think of her work as ever-evolving. "I am finding a lot of inspiration right now in emerging designers and young people creating with no boundaries or limits," she says.

JamesPOGUE

"EMPIRE STATE OF MIND," P. 76

"Environmental issues are inextricably linked to complex questions about how we order the world," says Pogue, who profiled Steve Bannon's renewed efforts at insurgency for this issue. Pogue is working on a new book about global power structures and rural California.

ChrisMURPHY

"FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES," P. 42

Murphy, a W staff writer and cohost of the Still Watching podcast, first saw Wicked on Broadway for his nth birthday, in 2004. Twenty years later, he still regularly belts out the musical's soundtrack at karaoke (and in the shower).

BrianSTELTER

"THE KAMALA BUMP," P. 40

Stelter wanted to capture the frantic, final months of the presidential campaign. "No one knows who will win the election, but everyone knows that Kamala Harris gives the Democrats a fighting chance," says the VF special correspondent and CNN chief media analyst.