As a Stanford freshman, IVAN MAISEL ended up in the same dorm -- Wilbur Hall's Rinconada -- as a guy named John McEnroe, '81. The two became friends, and soon Maisel found himself covering the future Wimbledon champ for the Daily. Maisel, '81, has been writing about college sports ever since for, among others, the Dallas Morning News and Newsday. In 1997, he joined Sports Illustrated, where these days he covers college football, college basketball and golf. While researching his story on the amazing career of tennis coach Dick Gould, Maisel was struck by how little Gould has changed. "I barely recognize old landmarks for all the new buildings," Maisel says. "The one thing I can always count on is that Dick will be at the tennis courts. For my own sense of youth, I hope he coaches another 20 years."
Frequent contributor THERESA JOHNSTON, '83, knew her eldest son was bright. "Even at 6 or 7, he could recite whole books from memory," she says. But reading was another matter. "It just didn't click -- he had trouble decoding individual words." Although well-meaning teachers kept assuring her he'd outgrow the problem, by the end of second grade Johnston insisted that her son be tested. Smart move: it turned out he had visual processing difficulties that required extra tutoring. Today, Johnston happily reports, her son earns A's and B's in middle school. Like Charles Schwab, whose struggle with dyslexia she writes about in this issue, Johnston believes you must trust your instincts about your own child -- and not wait too long to get help.
She has been writing fiction since she was a child, but KATIE MAURO had never submitted one of her stories to a contest until last summer. Winning first place in our fiction competition was "a kick in the pants," says Mauro, '95, MA '96. Her story, "Out of the Blue," is drawn from her own experience growing up in a tight-knit family outside Stockton, Calif. Mauro studied English and communication at Stanford and spent the summer of 1996 reading literature at Oxford. That experience convinced her to apply to a PhD program there. She was accepted but eventually decided not to go. Now, she's working as a publicist in Washington, D.C. "It's definitely not my calling," she says with a laugh. "I love writing. The more writing I can do, the happier I am."
While most people dream in a sort of movie format, illustrator JULIETTE BORDA says she dreams in snapshots. "I guess I kind of take my work to bed with me," she says. In her waking hours, she takes on assignments from the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, and Shape. Working in the watercolor medium called gouache, she tries to tell a story with each picture. Her illustration for "Out of the Blue" turned out to be "almost an abstract painting. It's kind of a formalist exercise," she says. Borda, 31, studied fine art at Carnegie Mellon University and now lives in Manhattan.
