Mimi Swartz

Houston

Executive Editor at Texas Monthly

Professionally nosy, exec editor Texas Monthly

Articles

My Mother Wasn’t Afraid to Be Beautiful

6 days ago | thefp.com | Mimi Swartz

How Much Plastic Surgery Does a Woman Really Need? Here’s the thing about being an older woman: You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. So you might as well please yourself. Welcome back to Ancient Wisdom, our new Sunday series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Last week, Emily Yoffe wrote about letting go of ambition. Today’s essay, by Mimi Swartz, explores a fraught subject: plastic surgery in your 70s.
Skye Perryman Is Taking On the Trump Administration

Feb 6, 2025 | texasmonthly.com | Mimi Swartz

This morning, a federal court temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s proposed buyouts of federal employees. The defeat came on the heels of another this week, when a district judge blocked the administration’s freeze on trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans. Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, several advocacy groups have been working tirelessly to blunt the effects of some of the administration’s most chaos-inducing orders.
Should Texas Teachers Really Have to Fundraise for Basic Supplies?

Jan 27, 2025 | texasmonthly.com | Mimi Swartz

This story originally appeared in the February 2025 issue of Texas Monthly as part of our public-education feature, “What Our Schools Actually Need.” I don’t remember how I stumbled upon DonorsChoose, a website that encourages giving to teachers who need additional resources for their classrooms.
Remembering Cecile Richards, a "Troublemaker" Who Never Lost Her Nerve

Jan 20, 2025 | texasmonthly.com | Mimi Swartz

She was and was not her mother’s daughter. What I mean is that Cecile Richards, who died of an aggressive brain cancer, on January 20, at 67, was in many ways the best of her mother, former Governor Ann Richards, as well as her father, civil rights lawyer David. If the progeny of famous parents often have a rockier path to tread, Cecile made her way in the world with grace and gratitude—for her past, her present, and far-too-abbreviated future.
Opinion: The Women of ‘Landman’ Stand Out for Surprising Reasons

Jan 13, 2025 | texasmonthly.com | Mimi Swartz

The other day, I staged a small film festival for myself that included The Last Picture Show (1971), Terms of Endearment (1983), and selected episodes of the 2006 TV series Friday Night Lights. I didn’t revisit these Texan stories entirely on a whim. I had been watching Landman, the Permian Basin–set series streaming on Paramount+, and with each passing episode, I was becoming more and more perplexed. What in the world was going on with the show’s female characters?
Can You Ever Leave a Difficult Childhood Behind?

Dec 24, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Mimi Swartz |Jeff Salamon

Somehow I missed much of the late-fall hype surrounding the release of Sarah LaBrie’s No One Gets to Fall Apart (Harper)—the “Best Books of Fall” plug from Oprah’s website, the favorable New York Times review, the Vogue Q&A—and I’m glad I did. It’s the kind of book that’s best to come upon by accident, like hitting it off with someone at an otherwise deadly cocktail party.
San Antonio Is Booming. Why Is It Still So Poor?

Nov 13, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Mimi Swartz

If experts are to be believed, San Antonio is finally closing in on its moment. Henry Cisneros, who has written not one but two books about his hometown’s potential, told me so, celebrating the immense changes he has seen since he left the mayor’s office in 1989. “The city is booming,” he said, in the silky pitchman’s tone that he honed during decades as a public servant.
Affordable Basics Ahoy! Uniqlo Has Arrived in Texas

Nov 1, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Mimi Swartz

People who were unfamiliar with the Japanese brand Uniqlo might have been taken aback by the delirium that struck various parts of Texas in October, when five stores—two in Houston area and three around Dallas—opened their doors to the devoted. The lines of shoppers trying to get into Houston’s Memorial City store on opening day snaked throughout that mall, with the patiently fervent, or fervently patient, rewarded with cans of jasmine green tea.
The Pioneering Surgeon Who Dreamed of a Better Heart

Oct 15, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Mimi Swartz

This past July, cardiac surgeon O. H. “Bud” Frazier helped achieve the near culmination of his life’s work: the implantation in a patient’s chest of an artificial heart that, theoretically, will last decades. Now 84, Frazier, the codirector of the Center for Preclinical Surgical & Interventional Research at Houston’s Texas Heart Institute, has performed more than 1,200 transplant operations in his long career.
A Eulogy for the Downed Trees of Houston

Sep 10, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Mimi Swartz

“Don’t fix that fence till you cut down that tree,” our new best friend, an arborist from the Davey Tree Expert Company, warned us. My husband and I were like so many Houstonians recalibrating from two storms just several weeks apart: the derecho of May 16 and Hurricane Beryl, which hit July 8, both of which brought black skies and drenching rain and upended Houston’s luxurious tree canopy like nothing we’d seen in our decades in the city.