Fiction

Featured Artist | Kim Buck

 Being a good lit citizen means supporting lit pubs. Donate. Buy. I’m going to show some #AWP17 mags that you need to support…. @NoTokensJournal, @EckleburgReview, @open_letter.
—Meakin Armstrong (Guernica)

 

Beds

There were twelve beds in the hospital ward today; tomorrow there will be eleven.

Garage Sounds

A dirty jar on a top shelf falls over, drops to the concrete floor and explodes. Glass shards fly… my mother’s bare legs… my baby sister…

Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and one skinny cat (his in-house critic). His short stories have been accepted by more than 100 publications including the Fifth Wednesday Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal and Boston Literary Magazine. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his story “The Sweeper.” Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist—who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.

Wheels of Industry

Our supervisors have purchased bullwhips. They are intended to keep us obedient and productive. Violence persuades.

Jason Jordan holds an MFA from Chatham University. His forthcoming books are Cloud and Other Stories (Six Gallery Press, 2010) and Powering the Devil’s Circus: Redux (Six Gallery Press, 2010). His prose has appeared online and in print in over forty literary magazines, including Hobart, Keyhole, Monkeybicycle, Night Train, PANK, Pear Noir!, and Storyglossia. Additionally, he’s Editor-in-Chief of decomP, accessible at www.decompmagazine.com. You can visit him at his blog at poweringthedevilscircus.blogspot.com.

Eckleburg Workshops in Fiction

Short Story Workshop

Short Short Story Workshop

Novel: From Start to Finish Workshop

Magic Realism Workshop

Writing Sex in Literary Fiction: Are Your Sex Scenes Essential or Gratuitous?

View All Fiction Workshops

About Eckleburg Fiction

Eckleburg runs online, daily content of original fiction and hybrid including work from Richard Peabody, Cris Mazza, Eurydice, Rick Moody, Steve Almond and more…. Read hard. Write hard. “Being a good lit citizen means supporting lit pubs. Donate. Buy. I’m going to show some #AWP17 mags that you need to support…”

Submit Your Fiction

We accept previously unpublished and polished prose up to 8,000 words year round, unless announced otherwise.  We are always looking for tightly woven short works under 2,000 words and short-shorts around 500 words. No multiple submissions but simultaneous is fine as long as you withdraw the submission asap through the submissions system. Please do not email the editors to withdraw your submission. Read more. Note: We consider fiction (and poetry) that has appeared in print, online magazines, public forums, and public access blogs as being published. Rarely do we accept anything already published and then only by solicitation. Once the piece is published in Eckleburg, the author is welcome to re-publish the work anywhere and everywhere. In these cases, we ask that the original publication be credited each time to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. One rare exception is our annual Gertrude Stein Award, which allows for submissions of previously published work.

 

Essays

Election 2016: A Lyric Essay

More than anything, this election seemed to be about space. A black man occupied the White House for two terms, and now a white woman has a serious chance of doing the same. Should it be surprising that The Donald won the Republican nomination? If a Negro or a Broad can rule the empire, surely a Wealthy White Man by virtue of his colonial legacy can too—personal background be damned. The rebellion might have achieved a minor progressive parade, but now The Empire Strikes Back. With no actual applicable experience to cite for his fifty-state job interview, Trump made it about space. The Oval Office is obviously too easy to obtain, and this corruption bores into every facet of the American Experience. It’s too easy for Mexicans to enter our climate-changed deserts, and so we need a goddamn wall to uppercut them back. It’s too easy for Syrian refugees to wait two years as they toss tarnished souls into a bureaucratic penny fountain, and so we need to outlaw Islam just to be safe. A matronly diplomat is within reach of Pennsylvania Avenue? She needs to be relocated to a prison with other nasty women. Law & Order, Law & Order, Law & Order. We are a country without laws if a white man’s ass is not on the throne. This order has been disrupted by these imposters, these Others.

Jeffrey H. MacLachlan also has recent work in New Ohio Review, Columbia Journal, the minnesota review, among others. He teaches literature at Georgia College & State University. He can be followed on Twitter @jeffmack.

Shift

Think about a person who meant something to you; and by “something,” I mean at that time you felt like they were your whole world. They were the water in a gravitational pull with the Moon. The Earth tries to hold onto everything as the Moon tries to pull everything closer. Since water is always shifting and moving, the Earth is able to hold onto everything but its water. And so the moon pulls at it, and the Earth is constantly in flux. Alternating between high and low tides. So maybe that person was your Moon. Maybe they pulled you into their brilliant luminosity, and you bulged at the weight of that pull on one end and bulged at the weight of yourself at the other end. And you were a thing constantly shifting, just as the word “you,” depending on who you are speaking about and to, shifts.

Angela Youngblood lives and writes in a small northern California town. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from CSU Chico. Her prose has recently been published in Entropy and is forthcoming in The Boiler Journal. Amateur plant enthusiast, but not-as-vigilant-a-plant-caretaker-as-she-would-like-to-be, she tries to nourish things to grow. She sporadically posts on her nebulous blog youngofblood.wordpress.com.   

 

Share the Road

At the corner of Health Center and Health Sciences Dr. in La Jolla, California, there is a bright orange sign that states “Share the Road.” I had just exited the Moores Cancer Center after my third of seventeen radiation treatments for a patch of malignancy near my right eyelid. This was my second time in the ring with the big “C.” It wasn’t as life-threatening as the other, but reading this simple road sign somehow eradicated my fear. Like the proton beam that daily sliced through my cancer, it reminded me that I am not alone in this, nor any other aspect of my life, while I share the road with others.

Jerry Parent is an MFA candidate in creative writing at Antioch University Los Angeles. He is serving as Lead Blog Editor for their online publication, Lunch Ticket, where his essays have also been published. He earned his B.A. in philosophy from St. John’s Seminary College and currently resides in San Diego, California.  

Essay and Other Nonfiction Workshops at Eckleburg

Personal Essay

Lyric Essay

Body Narrative

Modern Memoir

View All Workshops

Submit Your Essays

We accept polished creative nonfiction / essays up to 8,000 words year round, unless announced otherwise. Preferences veer toward shorter works under 1500 words with an arts and culture focus. If you wish to include a bio, keep it short, under 200 words. Submit your nonfiction.

Essay Collections and Memoir Manuscripts

We publish essays at The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. At this time, we do not publish novel, long memoir, essay collections, story collections or poetry collections at The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. We do offer manuscript workshops at The Eckleburg Workshops. If you are looking to place a manuscript, we can suggest several excellent small and large presses whose excellent books are promoted through our Eckleburg Book Club — i.e., Random House, Graywolf Press, Coffeehouse, Tinhouse, St. Martins Press and more.

 

Poetry

Eckleburg Workshops in Poetry

The Poetry Workshop

The Poetry Chapbook Workshop

Writing the Short Poem Workshop

The Beats Workshop

Spirit of Writing Workshop

Mindfulness & Writing Workshops

Hybrid: Crafting, Publishing & Promoting Hybrid Work

Literary Matchmaking Workshop

Breaking Rules: When and How to Leave Linguistic Conventions Behind  Workshop

Evolving Origins in Fiction, Poetry, Creative Nonfiction and Hybrid Workshop

View All Poetry Workshops

Submit Your Poems

We are now accepting previously unpublished poems. Please submit 1 – 5 poems as separate files in separate submissions. Please do not submit them all on one document. Submit. Note: We consider work that appeared in print, online magazines, public forums, and public access blogs as being published. Rarely do we accept anything already published and then only by solicitation. Once the piece is published in Eckleburg, the author is welcome to re-publish the work anywhere and everywhere. In these cases, we ask that the original publication be credited each time to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review.

Collection Manuscripts

We publish short works at The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. At this time, we do not publish novel, long memoir, essay collections, story collections or poetry collections at The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. We do offer manuscript workshops at The Eckleburg Workshops. If you are looking to place a manuscript, we can suggest several excellent small and large presses whose excellent books are promoted through our Eckleburg Book Club — i.e., Random House, Graywolf Press, Coffeehouse, Tinhouse, St. Martins Press and more.

 

write hard | fiction, poetry, essays, writing workshops & more

EVENTS |03/07/2019, 09:00 am @Hyatt Place Amsterdam | 2nd EuroSciCon Conference on Nanotech & Nanobiotechnology 2019

2nd EuroSciCon Conference on Nanotech & Nanobiotechnology 2019 03/07/2019 09:00 am There is an entry fee Hyatt Place Amsterdam Hyatt Place Amsterdam Airport Rijnlanderweg 800, 2132 NN Hoofddorp, Netherlands Amsterdam ** 2132 NN Netherlands After the successful completion of Euroscicon Conference on Nanotech and Nanobiotechnology, the Euroscicon is proud to host the 2nd Euroscicon Conference …

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EVENTS |03/04/2019, 10:00 am @Euroscicon | Data Science 2019

Data Science 2019 03/04/2019 10:00 am There is an entry fee Euroscicon Barcelona, spain Barcelona catalunia 12345 Spain EuroSciCon is organizing meeting 8th Edition of International Conference on Big Data & Data Science 2019 is scheduled from March 04-05 at Barcelona, Spain. EuroSciCon is the UK based independent life science Events Company with predominantly business …

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EVENTS |04/22/2019, 09:00 am @London, UK | 9th International Conference on Ageing Research and Geriatric Medicine 2019

9th International Conference on Ageing Research and Geriatric Medicine 2019 04/22/2019 09:00 am There is an entry fee London, UK EuroScicon Ltd 40 Bloomsbury Way Lower Ground Floor London, United Kingdom WC1A 2SE 40 Bloomsbury Way Lower Ground Floor London London WC1A 2SE United Kingdom This upcoming conference majorly focuses on senescence, aging demographics, and …

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Melanianade

Melania Trump (Cecily Strong), Ivanka Trump (Emily Blunt), Kellyanne Conway (Kate McKinnon), Omarosa (Sasheer Zamata) and Tiffany Trump (Vanessa Bayer) can no longer stand by Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin).

THE MAKE UP @ Black Cat

The Make Up was an American post-punk band from Washington, D.C. formed in 1995, consisting of ex-Nation of Ulysses frontman Ian Svenonius on vocals, James Canty on guitar and organ, Steve Gamboa on drums, and Michelle Mae on bass guitar. The Make-Up were joined in late 1999 by a fifth member, Alex Minoff (of the groups Golden and Extra Golden), who played guitar with the group until the band’s dissolution in early 2000.

AETHER | Catharsis

Catharsis: One of the great unsettled issues. That it implies a beneficial cathartic effect produced by witnessing a tragic action is clear; how it is produced is in question. Some believe that the spectators, by vicarious participation, learn through the fate of the tragic hero, that fear and pity are destructive and thereby learn to avoid them in their own lives (this interpretation is clearly didactic). Others believe that the spectator, being human and thus subject to disturbing emotions of fear and pity, has this imbalance rectified and these internal agitations stilled by having an opportunity vicariously to expend fear and pity on the hero…. (Handbook to Literature)

 
Being a good lit citizen means supporting lit pubs. Donate. Buy. I’m going to show some #AWP17 mags that you need to support… , , .” Meakin Armstrong (Guernica)
 
The most exciting and adventurous and gutsiest new magazine I’ve seen in years.” Stephen Dixon
 
Refreshing… edgy… classic… compelling.” Flavorwire
 
Progressive….” NewPages
 
Eye-grabbing… fun… bold… inviting… exemplary.” Sabotage
 
 
Eclectic selection of work from both emerging and established writers….” The Washington Post
 
Literary Burroughs D.C…. the journal cleverly takes its name from the The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald….” Ploughshares
 

Proud member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.

 

The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review was founded in 2010 as an online and print literary and arts journal. We take our title from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and include the full archives of our predecessor Moon Milk Review. Our aesthetic is eclectic, literary mainstream to experimental. Write hard. We appreciate fusion forms including magical realist, surrealist, meta- realist and realist works with an offbeat spin. We value character-focused storytelling and language and welcome both edge and mainstream writing with punch aesthetics. We like humor that explores the gritty realities of world and human experiences. Our issues include original content from both emerging and established writers, poets, artists and comedians such as authors, Rick Moody, Cris Mazza, Steve Almond, Stephen Dixon, poets, Moira Egan and David Wagoner and actor/comedian, Zach Galifianakis.

Currently, Eckleburg runs online, daily content of original fiction, poetry, nonfiction, translations, and more with featured artwork — visual and intermedia — from our Gallery. We run annual print issues, the Eckleburg Reading Series (DC, Baltimore and New York), as well as, the annual Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction, first prize $1000 and print publication, guest-judged by award-winning authors such as Rick Moody and Cris Mazza. Write hard.

We have collaborated with a number of talented and high profile literary, art and intermedia organizations in DC, Baltimore and New York including The Poetry Society of New York, KGB Bar, Brazenhead Books, New World Writing (formerly Mississippi Review Online), The Hopkins Review, Boulevard, Gargoyle Magazine, Entasis Press, Barrelhouse, Hobart, 826DC, DC Lit and Iowa’s Mission Creek Festival at AWP 2013, Boston, for a night of raw comedic lit and music. We like to promote smaller indie presses, galleries, musicians and filmmakers alongside globally recognized organizations, as well as, our local, national and international contributors.

Over the ashheaps the giant eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg kept their vigil, but I perceived, after a moment, that other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity from less than twenty feet away.  —The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald