Joshua Alvarez

1 month ago | kerrang.com | Emily Garner |Joshua Alvarez

The first wave of acts have been announced for this year’s Burn It Down Festival in Torquay. Heading to England’s south west seaside town between Friday, August 29 and Saturday, August 30 – and with plenty of bands appearing on the fest’s first-ever no-barrier main stage, which is incredibly exciting – are the likes of ZULU, Blood Command, Mouth Culture, Karen Dió, God Complex, Feed The Rhino, Tropic Gold, Frozemode, Native James and many more.

Dec 16, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Joshua Alvarez

For more Best Things in Texas coverage, read about the Texas Olympians who dominated at the Paris Games, the greatest show over Earth, the issue that brought Republicans and Democrats together, and the Man of the Year, Brisket Powell. For less dignified behavior, read the 2025 Bum Steer Awards. The Texas horned lizard, affectionately called the horny toad, may be iconic, but Texas hasn’t always treated it with due respect.

Dec 10, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Joshua Alvarez

It was almost 2 a.m. on a moonless October night at a ranch in Caldwell County, just northeast of San Antonio. I sat next to Eli Smith in his small utility terrain vehicle, the engine off. Behind us, the cargo bed held a kennel containing six dogs he had trained to track feral hogs. Smith is a large man with a keen appetite for killing invasive swine—he hunts them as often as four days a week. “I kill ’em any way I can,” he told me. “I shoot ’em with the AR-15.

Nov 15, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Joshua Alvarez

Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, a Palestinian American, and a devoted optimist living through what she calls “mysterious” times. Though the recent reelection of former President Donald Trump and the grinding war in Gaza has her feeling “despondent,” she also has cause for gratitude. Nye is the 2024 winner of the Texas Writer Award, which will be presented to her at the Texas Book Festival this weekend in downtown Austin.

Oct 17, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Joshua Alvarez

Artist Juan Stockmeyer finds inspiration in a place many of us avoid: the junkyard. The 66-year-old El Paso native has been haunting the resting places for cars, broken appliances, and other objects on both sides of the border for the past two decades. He’s loved collecting metal since he was a child. “Mexico is like a graveyard of old gears,” he says.