Lea Konczal

St. Louis

Digital Copy Editor at Texas Monthly

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Articles

Their Culture Was Almost Forgotten. Now Texas Wends Are Rediscovering Their Heritage.

Oct 9, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Lea Konczal |Rose Cahalan

In the Year of Festivals, Texas Monthly writers gamely join community celebrations across the state. Bring on the pageants, cook-offs, and parades! Until she was 22, Amy Mueller Reynolds didn’t know she was Wendish. “We didn’t realize we were not German,” she says of her immediate family. “The word ‘Wendish’ was never introduced.” We’re sitting in the main building of the Texas Wendish Heritage Museum, a lacy white structure that looks like it belongs on the front of a Christmas card.
The Forgotten Female Sharpshooter Who Surpassed Annie Oakley

Aug 6, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Lea Konczal |Rose Cahalan

Texans You Should Know is a series highlighting overlooked figures and events from Texas history. Ice water splashed over the sizzling gun barrel as the woman tried to cool her shotgun down. She’d been shooting for more than two hours. On this cool November day in Montgomery, Alabama, she was sweating. Her arms ached from holding the seven-and-a-half-pound Winchester. But the clay pigeons kept coming, whirling out of the trap machine like flying saucers from hell. Crack. Crack. Crack.
Inside America’s Last Ninepin Bowling Enclave

Jan 31, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Lea Konczal

Kathleen Hoffmann could have been a ghost. As the 87-year-old toed the foul line of her team’s lane at Solms Bowling Club, there wasn’t much around her to separate this moment, in 2023, from 1983, when Hoffmann was a fairly new member at Solms; or from 1933, shortly after the club moved to this spot from its original location across the street; or even from 1903, when the club was only five years old.
What a Texan Looks Like, According to A.I.

Jan 22, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Lea Konczal |Rose Cahalan

Quick: imagine a Texan. If you thought of a rugged white guy in a cowboy hat, artificial intelligence agrees with you—almost. Inspired by a Rest of World story that examined cultural stereotypes in the popular AI image generator Midjourney, we asked the program to create one hundred images in response to various Texas-related prompts, such as “a Texan,” “a house in Texas,” and “a plate of Texan food.” Of the 100 individuals Midjourney spat out in response to “a Texan,” 92 wore cowboy hats.