Jef Rouner (he/she/they) is an award-winning freelance journalist from Houston, Texas. He is also the author of The Rook Circle an Stranger Words, and a former member of The Black Math Experiment.
Hellcats follows a small group of queer women living and working near the High Street in 1920s London. It’s loosely based on the long-running gang known as the Forty Elephants, a group of women who were expert shoplifters thanks to their custom-made clothes.
Originally shot over four performances at the Vortex in Austin in 2024, Tyagaraja Welch's "Bridging With Mother" is surprisingly powerful even on a laptop screen
A photojournalist and photographer who chronicled the Chicano movement is the subject of several career retrospectives making their way through Texas, including an exhibition at Houston’s Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts (MECA)
To explain the Texas short film, “The Word,” (now available on YouTube), I have to spoil the ending. Don’t worry. You’ll have guessed it by the time you finish reading the next paragraph anyway. The short opens in an opulent boardroom. At one end are two very distinguished
"This offers us space, activities, and laughs. My God, don't we need a laugh right now?”
"Art goes hand in hand with action. Art inspires action, and I think that’s where the role of art becomes effective."
Pro wrestling is starting to see much greater LGBTQ+ representation, especially in Texas.
A generation ago, most Americans would not have been able to tell you who Krampus was. Now, the horned figure has become almost as much a part of Christmas as Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman. It’s hardly surprising that Krampus would see a major resurgence here in Texas.
Visiting the new Vincent Valdez career retrospective, Just a Dream, at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is like admiring a sunrise, only for the sunrise to admire you back. It’s gargantuan, liminal, and positively radioactive in its impact. Born in San Antonio in 1977, Valdez has long been one
Saba Razvi likes to write in airports, which is good because she flies out of George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) or William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) once a month. A poet, writer and critic who teaches at the University of Houston Victoria, she finds airports to be spaces full of
It’s 1974, and in Round Rock, Texas, the devil is about to die a gruesome death. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre* released in theaters, and horror has never been the same. The occult almost completely dominated the horror film scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Just a
The mask is a cornerstone of Halloween. Some people wear them to frighten others, enhancing the spooky nature of the season. Others use them as a form of trickery or roleplay, paying homage to the idea that Halloween is a time when the veil between worlds thins. Something about the
Thirty years ago this month, the San Jacinto River caught fire. Storms thrown off Hurricane Rosa in Mexico resulted in heavy rains in Houston, flooding the city and rupturing a 40-inch gasoline pipeline. Fuel poured into the river and quickly caught flame. Waves of fire flowed down the water, destroying
Houston’s oldest movie theater, the River Oaks, opened its doors again for the first time since 2021 on October 3. Under new direction and local ownership by Culinary Khancepts, it’s poised to become the beating heart of film in the city as it was over most of its
The ferry ride to Bolivar Peninsula in Galveston County is the first time in months I’ve stepped out in the daylight and not immediately made a rude gesture at the oppressive sun. The air over Galveston Bay is a good ten degrees cooler than the asphalt oven of Houston,
I needed a wing transplant for my tooth fairy, and that’s how I met Ashley Worhol for the first time in a decade. We were both vending at the night market at the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston this past summer. I was hawking my horror story