Title: XL editor/arts and entertainment editor

Hometown: Houston

Number of years in Austin: 20

Alma maters: University of Houston (B.A. in drama), University of Texas at Austin (M.A., Ph.D. in theater history and criticism)

Favorite novelists: V.S. Naipaul, Iris Murdoch, Henry James

Favorite living critics: Robert Hughes, Robert Brustein, Harold Bloom, Jed Perl, Paul Goldberger

Favorite dead critics: Samuel Johnson, G.B. Shaw, Edmund Wilson, Kenneth Tynan

Favorite magazines: American Scholar, Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Harper's, New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Texas Monthly, Times Literary Supplement

Favorite Web sites: ArtsJournal.com, Austin360.com

Favorite annual vacation: The Reading Week (25 friends share a beach house on the Gulf Coast every winter for reading, talking, cooking, drinking, etc.)

Hobbies: Spice Boys cooking club (as featured in The New York Times Magazine) and exploring Austin with the dogs (Alex, a reddish golden retriever, and Nick, a yellowish Labrador retriever the size of a pygmy rhino.)

Hangs out with: American Theatre Critics Association (chairman), Austin Critics Table, Dance Critics Association, International Art Critics Association-USA, Music Critics Association of North America

Old habits: Art, architecture, classical music, comedy, dance, theater, opera.

Additional habits that come with new editorial position: Bars, clubs, day trips, festivals, movie theaters, restaurants, video and DVD stores. Oh, and more television than in the past.

(Has also written for: Architecture, American Theatre, Classical, Dance Magazine, High Performance, Opera Now, Stagebill, Texas Highways, Theatre InSight.)