CONTRIBUTORS

Barbara Walters

One of the pioneering female journalists of our time, Barbara Walters was not only the first woman to co-host NBC’s Today but the first one to co-anchor a network nightly news program, the ABC Evening News. She has also hosted 20/20 and her Barbara Walters Specials, and may currently be seen on her award-winning talk show, The View, all on ABC. In her new memoir, Audition, out May 6 from Knopf and excerpted here on page 152, she provides a revealing look at her remarkable career and the challenges that workingwomen face. Asked what there is left that she would like to accomplish, Walters says, “In my book, I write of a golden ring that my late friend the wonderful soprano Beverly Sills used to wear. Her husband had it engraved for her, and she eventually gave it to me as a special gift of love. The ring said, ‘I did that already.’ That is the way I feel. I do not want to climb any more mountains [but] I am certainly not just standing still.”

Thurston Clarke

In an excerpt from his book The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America (“The Last Good Campaign,” page 116), Thurston Clarke examines Kennedy’s decision to run for president in 1968, and the early stages of the campaign that ended with his tragic assassination. Clarke notes, “Almost everyone I interviewed, including press and aides, choked up—even people who had only met him for a few hours.” Kennedy and his staff had been highly sensitive to the risk of an assassination, but, according to Clarke, “he felt the only way to campaign was to let people see him and touch him. People told him to campaign from a TV studio, but he said he couldn’t do it.” Clarke’s book comes out this month from Henry Holt.

Jacques d’Amboise

Recognized as an outstanding figure in the dance community, former New York City Ballet principal dancer Jacques d’Amboise retired before his eventual successor Damian Woetzel leapt to the stage. As Woetzel now gracefully exits the ballet stage, after more than 23 years with the New York City Ballet, d’Amboise celebrates the virtuoso, on page 134. “A career in New York City, with one of the top ballet companies, is an accomplishment to be lauded for anyone, but Damian Woetzel’s talent, ambition, and goodwill make this occasion even more momentous,” says d’Amboise. As the founder of the National Dance Institute, a nonprofit arts-education organization based in New York City, d’Amboise is familiar with staying busy postretirement: “Damian is too involved with doing other things to feel withdrawal. Life is a series of lakes; he has simply left one and is now swimming in another.”

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Michael Dobbs

Uncovering the story of a wayward U-2 spy plane that ended up over the Soviet Union on the most dangerous day of the Cuban missile crisis, reporter and author Michael Dobbs spent more than three years interviewing eyewitnesses and poring over archives. Much of what he discovered remains officially classified by the U.S. government. “It has been 46 years since the episode occurred, and the air force has still not released any records about a hugely embarrassing incident that could have led to a nuclear war,” says Dobbs, who currently writes the “Fact Checker” column for The Washington Post. His forthcoming book, One Minute to Midnight.: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (Knopf)— the minute-by-minute story of the world’s closest-ever brush with nuclear destruction—is due out in June.

Bruce Handy

With two kids of his own, ages 9 and 11, deputy editor Bruce Handy was no stranger to Miley Cyrus and her Disney Channel alter ego, Hannah Montana. But the maturity of the young star came as a surprise. “She’s poised and preternaturally self-confident,” Handy says, which is amazing in any 15-yearold, let alone one whose bad-hair days and French-fry-scarfing sessions are plastered all over the Internet.” Handy’s own image—albeit with half his head cropped out—circulated online after paparazzi snapped him exiting a restaurant with Miley, her mom, and sister Noah.

Evgenia Peretz

Sitting across from notorious author James Frey at a dinner for her child’s pre-school last fall, Vanity Fair contributing editor Evgenia Peretz had a reaction which many do when first encountering the man Oprah famously shredded: “It was like ‘Oh my God. It’s that guy.'"' But once Peretz began investigating the story of Frey’s undoing, she came to believe that he was not the villain con artist the media made him out to be two years ago. “He was by no means innocent, but there was also blame to go around. He became the whipping boy,” she says.

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Bill Eppridge

As a staff photographer for Life magazine in the 1960s, Bill Eppridge covered “wars, riots, revolutions,” and pretty much everything else imaginable. He had just come back from Vietnam when his editors asked him in 1966 to start following and cataloguing the life of Bobby Kennedy. “I didn’t know him at all,” says Eppridge, “and I came to like him very much, very quickly.” In 1968, R.F.K. announced his candidacy for the presidency, and Eppridge was assigned to cover the campaign, which he documented up to and including the very moment of Kennedy’s assassination. A collection of the resulting, remarkable photographs—many never published before, and some excerpted here on page 116—is being published this month by Abrams as A Time It Was: Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties. Looking back, Eppridge remains particularly impressed by R.F.K.’s inquisitiveness and open-mindedness: “At the end of the day the photographers would be sitting around, and Bobby would come and talk to us. He wanted to know what we thought, and he wanted to make sure we were able to tell whatever story we wanted visually.”

Doug Stumpf

Before joining Vanity Fair, in 1994, deputy editor Doug Stumpf worked for 15 years in book publishing, and he edited six books by the late V.F contributing editor David Halberstam. (Stumpf was also his editor at this magazine.) Now, after nearly 14 years at V.F, Stumpf says he’s finally starting to think of himself as a “magazine person” and not a “book person.” But last year HarperCollins published his first novel, Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy, which gave him a chance “to see what being on the other side of the equation is like,” he says. “I now fully understand why writers are so neurotic.” He’s excited to be working with Michael Lewis on his first piece for V.F, which will run next month, as well as with V.F. regulars Michael Wolff and Evgenia Peretz, who have stories in this issue.

Dana Brown

Dana Brown has had a second upbringing at V.F, which he joined in 1994 as editor Graydon Carter’s assistant when Brown was 21 years old. He is now a senior articles editor and makes it his mission to bring in some of the more unusual and outrageous stories in the lineup every month. One such story was Evan Wright’s 24,000-word, ASME-award-nominated profile of gonzo film agent Pat Dollard, from last year’s Hollywood Issue. “Finding the stories that are off the beaten path is always more challenging,” says Brown, “but so much more rewarding when they work out.” And Brown cherishes working alongside some of the best writers in the business: “You get to help tell unbelievable stories, and you don’t get shot at.”