Cary Clack is a columnist and editorial board member with the San Antonio Express-News, where he was the first Black metro columnist and the first Black member of the editorial board. He has covered local and national news, events, and social issues for three decades. In 2017 he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. The Texas Associated Press Managing Editors awarded him opinion writer of the year in 2021, followed by awards for editorial writing in 2022 and both general column writing and editorial writing in 2023. He is the author of Clowns and Rats Scare Me and More Finish Lines to Cross. He lives in San Antonio, Texas.
Joe Holley is on the Houston Chronicle staff, where he serves on the editorial board and writes a weekly column. He is the author of Hometown Texas, Hurricane Season: The Unforgettable Story of the 2017 Houston Astros and the Resilience of a City, Sutherland Springs: God, Guns, and Hope in a Texas Town, and Slingin’ Sam: The Life and Times of the Greatest Quarterback Ever to Play the Game, and Native Texan: Stories from Deep in the Heart. He was a 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series of editorials about gun control and Texas gun culture, and a 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner, as part of the Houston Chronicle team. He lives in Austin.