Looking through some of my favorite issues of Dragon from the 80s and 90s today, I was thinking about great Dragon authors that aren't as well-known as Gygax, Greenwood, Mohan, Moore, Ward, Cook, Grubb, Lakofka, etc.
One name quickly jumped right to the forefront: Arthur Collins. This gentleman wrote a ton of classic articles in TSR's Dragon. His speciality wasn't designing rules bits like new monsters and spells, but rather eloquent essays on honing GMing and world-building skills. Everything from "Reflections of a Real-Life Cleric" back in 1980 to "Inventing the Instant Adventure" and "What Not to Include" from circa 1992. His run was epic and his great articles too many to count. These articles have been a constant inspiration to me over the years.
Is Mr. Collins still alive? Has there been any effort from the Paizo staff to try to wrangle him into contributing more content?
did he not also write the ever-popular article about the orange, yellow and purple dragons, as well as its 2nd-edition revision? :)