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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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" …
It's easy to romanticize the relationship between solitude and the writer. Easy to smile when we picture Thoreau traipsing off into the woods to write Walden . Easy to think that all we have to do to …
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 …
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 …
Telephone Road . Thomas Derr, Colgate University Press: Hamilton, 2012. There is something of a gap in contemporary Western literature in what might be called, after Camus, Sartre and perhaps Pirsig, …
Ever since I was five years old, September has meant the start not only of school, but also of football. In honor of this, I have created the All-Time, All-Star, All-Literature Football team. If I …
I find myself standing a little ways away from my lectern, staring off into space and picking at my lips with bitten-short fingernails. This happens every once in a while when I am working--I find …
"Everyone has a personal story to tell." This is one of the core values of Writers in the Schools . Along with many other UH creative writing graduate students, I work for WITS , a non-profit …
From an overabundance of fruit (mixed with elegant china and random doll parts) to houses of "liberated" mugs, the 2013 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Biennial at the Houston …
[As our story continues...on the last episode of " That's Called a Montage ": "I've attempted to render something productive from the hours (ahem, years) I have dedicated to a not-so-sleepy little …
At the end of the spring semester, after being inspired by a bit of Ellen DeGeneres stand-up in which she concludes procrastination is the universe's way of telling us to live in the moment …
Over at The Kenyon Review , the editors have been running a stellar series on their blog called " Why We Chose It ." And I admit: I've been stalking these posts. Not because the Kenyon Review 's …
Recently I had an "acoustic experience of terrestrial relief." The Art of Failure (the acoustic art website, not the band) recently featured a project called The Flat Earth Society , an acoustic …
When you enter the galleries at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, a conspicuously placed sign immediately admonishes you not to touch the art. Frequent visitors to art museums might find …