About the Artist Talk

About Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts

Founded by Philip Lopate and Donald Bartheleme in 1986, Gulf Coast is a journal of literature, art, and critical writing, publishing contributors who represent a flow of international cultures, voices, and aesthetics. Through programs and publications, and in collaboration with the University of Houston, Gulf Coast brings consequential art and writing to an engaged audience.

About the speakers

Erika Jo Brown is from New York. She is the author of the poetry collection I’m Your Huckleberry (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2014). She graduated from Cornell University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Currently, she is a PhD student in literature and creative writing at the University of Houston, where she is a poetry editor and reading series co-curator for Gulf Coast.

Cassandra Rose Clarke grew up in south Texas and currently lives in a suburb of Houston, where she writes and teaches composition at a pair of local colleges. She holds an M.A. in creative writing from The University of Texas at Austin, and in 2010 she attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle. Her work has been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award and YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults. Her latest novel is Our Lady of the Ice, out now from Saga Press. www.cassandraroseclarke.com/about/bio-contact/

Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud is an artist and writer based in Houston. While minimal, her work is driven by explorations in physicality, materiality and sensation. She has participated in exhibitions throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and in the U.S., including Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Brooklyn Arts Council and Chashama Project Studio in New York; Diaspora Vibe Gallery and Art Center/ South Florida in Miami; and recently at Project Row Houses in Houston. She has participated in artist residencies in Morelia, Michoacán, México as part of Identidades; Art in Public Spaces International Encounter organized by 5célula and International Cultural Exchanges in the Bahamas and St. Maarten through Diaspora Vibe Gallery. Her creative practice takes on many forms, including painting, sound art, and writing. She is organizing and participating in an upcoming exhibition in summer 2016 at Art League Houston, featuring women visual artists who also make sound art. Mccloud is the founder of labotanica, an interdisciplinary design studio scheduled to relaunch this year.

Henk Rossouw is originally from Cape Town. He has published poems in The Paris Review, Transom, The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Review, and, forthcoming, in The Common. Rossouw has also published nonfiction and fiction in journals such as The Threepenny Review, The Chronicle Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Tin House. After his MFA at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, he entered the creative writing PhD program at the University of Houston, where he serves as a poetry editor for Gulf Coast. Find out more about Rossouw’s work at http://www.henkrossouw.com/.

Sehba Sarwar is a writer and multidisciplinary artist currently based in Houston, where she has recreated a community filled with artists, activists, and educators similar to one in Karachi, Pakistan, where she was raised. Through her art, Sarwar explores displacement and women’s issues, moving between South Asia and the U.S.Her stories, essays, and poems straddle South Asia and the U.S. and have appeared in anthologies, newspapers, and magazines in Canada, India, Pakistan, and the U.S. in publications including Asia: Magazine of Asian Literature, The New York Times’ Sunday Magazine, and Callaloo. While serving as artist-in-residence (2012-14) at the University of Houston’s Mitchell Center for the Arts, Sarwar began her memoir What Is Home?In 2014, Sarwar received the Mid-America Arts Alliance’s Artistic Innovations award through which she extended her writings into a multidisciplinary exhibition and performance. In 2000, Sarwar founded Voices Breaking Boundaries, a multidisciplinary arts organization that tackles urgent social justice issues through art. To learn more about Sarwar’s work, visit her website at http://sehbasarwar.comsehbasarwar.com.

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