There are less than two weeks left to enter to win the annual Gulf Coast Prizes, judged by Andrea Barrett (Fiction), John D’Agata (Nonfiction), and Rachel Zucker (Poetry). Be sure to get your entries in before the March 15th deadline!

The contest awards publication and $1,500 each to the best poem, essay, and short story, as well as $250 to two honorable mentions in each genre. The winners will appear in Gulf Coast 27.1, due out in Fall 2014, and all entries will be considered for paid publication on our website as Online Exclusives. To view past winners and judges, please visit here.

The entry fee includes a year-long subscription to Gulf Coast. The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2014. Click here for how to enter.

About the 2014 Gulf Coast Prize Judges

Andrea Barrett will judge the 2014 Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction. Andrea Barrett teaches writing at Williams College and lives in North Adams, Massachusetts, with her husband, photographer Barry Goldstein. She’s the author of six novels, most recently The Air We Breathe, and three collections of stories: Ship Fever, which received the 1996 National Book Award, Servants of the Map, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and, most recently, Archangel.

John D’Agata will judge the 2014 Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction. John D’Agata is the author of a few books of nonfiction, including About a Mountain and Halls of Fame, and the editor of The Lost Origins of the Essay and The Next American Essay. He teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa, where he is the director of the Nonfiction Writing Program.

Rachel Zucker will judge the 2014 Gulf Coast Prize in Poetry. Rachel Zucker is the author of seven books, most recently, Home/Birth: a poemic (co-written with Arielle Greenberg) and Museum of Accidents. She lives in New York with her husband and their three sons and teaches at New York University.

Join Us in May for MenilFest!

Come to Houston this summer! Join us for this year’s Indie Book Fair at MenilFest, hosted by Gulf Coast through a collaboration with The Menil Collection and the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.

The 2014 festival will be on Saturday, May 3, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Menil Park. The event is completely free and open to the public, attracts thousands of visitors, and features more than 75 nationally-distributed literary journals alongside new and used booksellers, publishers, small presses, literary organizations, and writers. You can sign up to learn more and the festival by joining HIBF on Facebook and Twitter, or you can contact indiebookfest@gmail.com if your organization is interested is exhibiting at the festival.

If you’re a CLMP member organization who can’t attend the festival, we hope you’ll consider donating copies of your journal or from your press for sale at the bookfair’s CLMP table. It’s a great way to get your publication into the hands of readers, and proceeds from the sale of the issues go to support the bookfair and the CLMP. Additionally, any copies of poetry books remaining at the end of the fair will be donated to the African Poetry Book Fund. Please send copies for donation to: Gulf Coast, 4800 Calhoun Road, Houston, TX 77204.

Join Gulf Coast Online!

Are you aware of all the great contemporary literature being published by Gulf Coast Online? Our Editors’ Blog is updated twice-weekly with essays on writing, craft, publishing, and more and every two weeks we present a new Gulf Coast Online Exclusive: stories, poems, and essays that appear on gulfcoastmag.org and nowhere else! For periodic updates on Gulf Coast—including announcements about new blogposts and Gulf Coast Online Exclusives, upcoming readings, and contest deadlines—join us on Facebook and Twitter.