The Gulf Coast Blog

Craft • Culture • News

Craft • Culture • News

Ever Wonder Why Your Bookcase is Called "Billy"?

Becca Wadlinger

As the resident Scandinavian language speaker here in the Gulf Coast office, I thought I'd let you in on the entertaining taxonomy that exists within the shelves of Swedish superstore IKEA. I began to notice patterns in the furniture names years ago,…


These are the best poems in the world ever

Ian Stansel

With it being National Poetry Month, I thought I'd like to ask a truly unfair question: what are the best poems? Some of our editorial staff indulged my whim and got back to me with a few of their favorite, most influential, and best loved pieces. Sam…


The Sound of the Mountain

Gulf Coast Online Editor

"Bright, bright, and bright, bright, bright, and bright, bright. Bright and bright, bright, and bright, bright moon." ¶Myoe, Buddhist Priest, 1173-1232 I've been thinking a lot lately about Japan. I think we all have. Shortly after I heard about the earthquake,…


A Monologue About Dialogue and the Importance of Genre Exploration

Christine Ha

A one-act play I wrote last semester under the tutelage of Mark Medoff was recently read onstage at the University of Houston's Wortham Theater. While primarily a fiction writer, I found playwriting to be an exercise in creating powerful scenes, scenes…


Local Readers: See you at the Houston Indie Book Fest this Saturday!

Becca Wadlinger

If you happen to live around the Houston area, we hope to see you at the fourth annual Houston Indie Book Fest this Saturday (April 2nd) outside the Menil Collection. The book fair starts at 11 a.m. and continues until 5 p.m. There will be live music,…


The Genius of Friday

Thea Lim

Last week, the internet took a break from the civil war in Libya and the impending nuclear meltdown in Japan to hate on a tween. In case you were doing something important and missed the kerbloffle,1 Rebecca Black is a chirpy thirteen year-old Justin…


Under the Covers Under the Influence

Laura Eve Engel

As someone who does some musical arranging but no original songwriting to speak of, I've been thinking a little bit lately about the weird, interstitial territory of the cover song. Sure, we're all active readers and writers, and on our better days we're…


A Sense of Place

Elizabeth Lyons

½Then the Midwest. I have always loved the loneliness of those midsized cities strewn along the plains, in them it seems to me my heart would at last be that open field where an entirely new love could snow. -Matthew Zapruder, "Dobby's Sweatshirt" I wonder…


Ronald Johnson's Cookbooks

Samuel Amadon

When we think of Ronald Johnson, we probably think of his erasure Radi os or of his long poem ARK--which is in desperate need of a reissue--but he was also the author of several excellent cookbooks: The Aficionado's Southwestern Cooking--the most comprehensive…


Please do judge us by our cover

Becca Wadlinger

Image: The Citizen-Scientist Bands (2010) by Dario Robleto. Image courtesy of Brad Nagar and Reid Sutton Collection. Here's a sneak peek at the cover for Gulf Coast's 25th anniversary issue (Summer/Fall 2011). The issue includes some real rock stars on…