“She was truly her own character”

Michael Witte

ILLUSTRATOR

For Michael Witte, drawing Julia Reed was easy; no matter how eccentric he made the scene, it couldn’t be too far off from the writer’s larger-than-life personality. “She was truly her own character,” says Witte, who had illustrated Reed’s column, the High & the Low, since 2011. Now based in New York,, , and , Witte grew up on a farm outside of St. Louis. “I’ve always felt connected to Julia’s work, especially to the extent it explored the rural nature of the South,” he says. In this issue, Witte bids farewell to Reed with a final watercolor homage (p. 106).