Porter Gulch Review

by Ayo Khensu-Ra

Porter Gulch Review is a literary journal out of Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz County. Like Forum and other college-based literary magazines it is assembled by students. It features poetry and fiction, drama, critiques/reviews interspersed with photographs and other forms of visual art.

The magazine is mostly black and white. The design is very clean and modern with the authors’ names placed vertically near the margins of the pages; titles are in gray above standard black print. On some of the pages, writings share space and overlap with pictures Much of the visual art is very striking and compliments the written material very well. Much of the written material itself is also very good, covers a wide range of subjects and experiences as well as a range of styles and techniques.

The poetry and fiction is followed by a series of critiques concerning selected submissions to the magazine as well as book reviews. Both sections are written by students in the class that produces PGR. The quality varies a bit in these two subsections though overall, the reviews and critiques are interesting. Overall Porter Gulch Review is a nicely put together, with a lot of quality fiction, poetry, photographs and artwork and is well worth a read.

Issues back to 1999 are available as PDFs on Cabrillo College’s website.