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…

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.…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 be good writers is hermit ourselves. Let's stop giving…

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…

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…