In this issue, you'll meet a dozen of those achievers and visionaries-our Men and Women of the Year. They range from one of America's most successful entrepreneurs, who decided it wasn't money that would give meaning to his life and is now building a new Catholic university near Immokalee, to a former boxing champ devoted to helping disadvantaged kids in Fort Myers. Some came here after building their fortunes elsewhere; others arrived with little more than a dream and determination. But they're all using their resources and talents to make the Gulfshore a better place.

We've done a little reinventing ourselves with this issue, adding features and columns by some new contributing writers, who also testify to the remarkable talents this region attracts. Like most editors, I'm convinced that magazines are first of all about the stories; glossy paper and gorgeous images delight the senses, but it's the stories we tell that keep you turning pages and which touch your heart.

Few writers can tell stories-especially Florida stories-with more passion and power than Peter B. Gallagher. A native Floridian with a fierce love for the state's fast-vanishing places and people, he's won scores of awards for environmental and investigative reporting and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize several times, including by the St. Petersburg Times and the Miami Herald. He's also the only writer I've ever met whose résumé is titled, "Journalist, Writer, Composer, Producer" and lists credits from writing and producing national PBS documentaries to founding the influential Save the Florida Panther association. Pete drew on his extensive knowledge of Southwest Florida and its people in reporting on Immokalee for us this month. His "Deliverance," which begins on page 98, paints a vivid portrait of this struggling little farm town as it waits to see how the new Ave Maria University may-or may not-transform its fortunes.

If, like me, you've developed an addiction to Robert Plunket's droll "Culture Vulture" column, you may be alarmed to see it's missing from this issue. That's because Plunket, recently called the only great living American comic novelist (My Search for Warren Harding, Love Junkie) by the Washington Post, has decided he needs to live up to those laurels and finish his long-awaited third book. He remains our editor at large, but he's taking a break from his column this season. (If you're desperate for a Plunket fix, you can catch him on November 1 at the Sarasota Reading Festival.)

Fortunately, we've persuaded American's next great comic novelist, Tim Dorsey, to take Plunket's place. Dorsey, who has already earned accolades for his wildly funny novels about a serial killer with a soft spot for Florida history (Stingray Shuffle is the most recent), grew up in Florida and shares his protagonist's obsession with the state. "Deranged, depraved, and dead-on," one reviewer wrote about the Tampa Bay writer. As you'll see in his new "Captain Florida" column, which searches out what's weirdest and most wonderful about our state, he's all that. But he's also one of the most polite, unassuming guys imaginable, devoted to his wife and two young daughters and so disciplined he sends us stories months before they're due.

We've been begging Ad Hudler to write for us for two years, ever since the Fort Myers novelist gave us a nonstop-narrated personal tour of his favorite Southwest Florida places. (It's the same tour he gave the CNN crew when they came down to interview him about his novel Househusband.). We finally caught him between book deadlines (his latest, Southern Living, was published this August); his "AdVentures" column will take you on fresh and lively day trips (a passionate foodie, he brakes for great restaurants) every month.

And we wouldn't dare end without mentioning two of our longstanding columnists. Naples resident Hollis Alpert is a former editor of The New Yorker and noted novelist and critic, whose "Here's Hollis" column begins its third season with us this month. And our former editor Bob Morris just won the Florida Magazine's prestigious Charlie Award for the best column in a Florida magazine for his "Only on the Gulfshore"; you'll find it on the last page of this and every issue.