Dear Gulf Coast Supporters, Gulf Coast's 2011 Gala is just around the corner. This annual event is the cornerstone of our fundraising efforts and a night that the Houston literary and arts communities look forward to all year. The event will take place…

In 1996, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, an English professor at George Washington University, published Monster Theory, a short anthology of critical essays dealing with monsters in literary and cinematic history. The essays run the gamut - exploring everything…

Some writers work on film and some do not. Sure, there have been a few good movies about novelists and poets--Curtis Hanson's adaptation of Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys is charming and funny; Jane Campion's Keats-Brawne romance Bright Star is gorgeous;…

I normally wouldn't post to the Gulf Coast blog about a subject just recently addressed by another editor, but in this case, I'd like to do just that. Sort of. Earlier this week, Gulf Coast's editor, Ian Stansel, wrote about the effects that the reading…

There has been a spate of articles written in recent months about the value of books and an education in the Humanities. Danny Heitman of the Christian Science Monitor points out that the Humanities are "an important source of wisdom for those who wish…

We know that extra cash is in short supply for so many people these days and that things like magazines are luxuries compared to many other products around the house. We here at Gulf Coast are feeling the pinch, too, with state funding cuts to arts organizations…

Let's be honest: if you're reading this blog you've probably read your fair share of submission guidelines, and, like me, you've probably received plenty of solicited and unsolicited publishing advice--some of it bad, but a lot of it just useless: of…

Before I became a struggling writer, I was a struggling comedian. This is perhaps not surprising given the three things my childhood never suffered for: books from yard sales, comedy on vinyl, and sarcasm. My father would often leave a Bill Cosby or George…

Three years sounded like an eternity when I first showed up in the University of Houston's Creative Writing Program. But the time has flown by - a real hurricane of bizarre and beautiful encounters that have left me wondering, Dude, where's my car? So,…

For as long as I knew him, my grandfather sat in the same leather arm chair and listened to the same jazz songs on the same radio station. At every family party, he drank the same red-tinted Manhattan with a cluster of Maraschino cherries at the bottom…