The Gulf Coast Blog

Craft • Culture • News

Craft • Culture • News

Gatsby's Favorite Nirvana Song

Thomas Calder

So I grew up idolizing Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. Now at twenty-eight years of age, I'm wrapping up the latest draft of a novel I've been working on over the last two and a half years. And what does this novel deal (at least in part) with? You ready for…


How Facebook Can Be Good For Productivity

Sara C Rolater

I've recently discovered that writing a novel, or rather my writing a novel, or rather my trying to write a novel, takes years. I've also discovered that the key to the writer's life is not to be overwhelmed by this prospect but to enjoy the process.…


Becoming Better Readers of Our Own Writing

Claire Fuqua Anderson

Whether your reader is the editor of a literary magazine, an agent, a teacher, your mom, the imagined love child of Amy Hempel and William Faulkner, or a nameless, faceless ghosty-like presence, you have one. Sometimes we meet our readers face to face,…


Where to Find Us

Zachary Martin

We hope you'll consider purchasing a subscription to Gulf Coast. But if you can't wait for Gulf Coast to arrive in the mail, you can purchase it at these fine retailers: Green Apple Books (San Francisco, CA)Paras Newsstand (San Diego, CA)The Book Cellar, DePaul…


The Love of a Good Publication

Talia Mailman

Anyone who knows me will tell you this: I hate dating. I hate dating so much I'd rather stare at my ceiling fan for four hours watching dust settle than sit at a bar talking to a stranger. I hate dating so much I'd rather grade the fifty-four undergrad…


Writing Space

Sam Mansfield

Space and place continue to be fertile territory for writers living around the world today. Why? We hardly know the space we live in. Just last month, scientists discovered a volcano on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean more massive than any other volcano…


The George Saunders First-Person Pharmaceutical Diction Shift

Will Wilkinson

George Saunders does this thing where he give characters drugs to make them talk fancy. Two stories in Saunders' latest collection, The Tenth of December, use this trick. In "Escape from Spiderhead" inmates in a penal facility are exploited for pharmaceutical…


What We've Been Up To

Zachary Martin

Most often, the wheels turn slowly at literary journals. Response times to submissions and queries stretch into the months; production schedules are counted in weeks instead of days; at a biannual like Gulf Coast, whole seasons go by before a new issue…


Liberation and Solace in David Foster Wallace

Steve Sanders

Five years ago, about a week after I handed in my MFA thesis, I learned of the suicide of David Foster Wallace. By September's end, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns had filed for bankruptcy and the Great Recession was upon us. It was a bad time to reenter…