Gulf Coast 40th Anniversary Gala
with Hanif Abdurraqib, Adrian Matejka and Emily Skaja
Thursday, October 1 at 6:00 p.m.
Sunset Coffee Building
1019 Commerce St.
Houston, TX 77002
Candace Baggett and Ron Restrepo cordially invite you to join Gulf Coast for our 2026 Gala, with past contributors Hanif Abdurraqib, Adrian Matejka and Emily Skaja as our featured speakers.
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic with five collections of poetry and essays, includingThey Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us (named a book of the year by NPR, Oprah Magazine and The Los Angeles Review), Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest (a New York Times Bestseller), and A Little Devil In America (winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award).
Adrian Matejka is the author of four poetry collections, including Mixology (a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series), and The Big Smoke (awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in poetry). Matejka has been awarded fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. He served as Poet Laureate of the state of Indiana in 2018-19 and is Editor-in-Chief of Poetry magazine.
Emily Skaja is the author of Brute (winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets), and Black Lake (forthcoming from Graywolf in September 2026). She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Tennessee Arts Commission among others, and is an Associate Professor in the MFA program at the University of Memphis.
Host Committee:
Eddie Allen & Chinhui Juhn
Mary & Marcel Barone
Laurie Cedilnik
Katharine Barthelme Frank & Shane Frank
Matt Henneman & Kimberly Cutchall
Tayyba Kanwal & Rashed Haq
Misty & Surena Matin
Dean Daniel P. O'Connor, PhD
Kevin Prufer
Lillie Robertson
Lois Stark
Roberto Tejada
We hope to see you there!
Purchase Tickets Here:
Visionary Table $30,000
Reserved table for 12 guests with premier seating and premium wine service
Opportunity for a Featured Speaker or Gulf Coast Editor to join your table
Printed recognition on the program and verbal recognition at the event
Underwriter Table $15,000
Reserved table for 12 guests with prominent seating
Opportunity for a Featured Speaker or Gulf Coast Editor to join your table
Printed recognition on the program and verbal recognition at the event
Benefactor Table $12,000
Reserved table for 10 guests
Opportunity for a Featured Speaker or Gulf Coast Editor to join your table
Printed recognition on the program and verbal recognition at the event
Sponsor Table $10,000
Reserved table for 10 guests
Printed recognition on the program and verbal recognition at the event
Patron Table $7,500
Reserved table for 10 guests
Printed recognition on the program
Friend Table $5,000
Reserved table for 8 guests
Printed recognition on the program
Individual Sponsor Ticket $1,000
Reserved seating
Printed recognition on the program
Individual Patron Ticket $650
Open seating
I'm unable to attend in person but would like to support the Gulf Coast 40th Anniversary Gala with a donation.
For additional information or assistance, please contact us at business@gulfcoastmag.org
