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)

 

The Last Moment in Mexico

“Most of the lanterns were broked in the stampede,” Cooch says, and he lifts a candle to his face.

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We accept previously unpublished and polished prose up to 8,000 words year round, unless announced otherwise.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

Mr. Kim

Chuseok fell in early September that year. In Korea, it is a day for families to gather together and celebrate. Like Thanksgiving, it is a harvest festival, but unlike Thanksgiving, it lasts three days instead of one. Since it is a major holiday, Wonderland, the school in which I was teaching, closed for a week. Many of my American colleagues, teachers who had already been working several months, had booked flights to awesome places, places I’d have loved to travel to myself: Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. But having only arrived three weeks earlier and having very little money, I intended to stay in Seoul. There I planned to get better acquainted with the city that would be my home until mid-summer. However, my new friends, Jake, Lauren and Lindsey, were intent on a vacation and they chose Jejudo—an Island off the Southern coast of South Korea—as their destination. When they first invited me to join them, I was hesitant, uncertain that I’d have enough money to last me until my first pay check. But the thought of going somewhere different—somewhere close enough that the airfare wouldn’t break me—proved to be too much of a temptation, and I quickly relinquished my plans to stay behind.

Elizabeth Jaeger holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her work has been published in Parentheses Journal, Brush Talks, Waypoints, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Peacock Journal, Boston Accent Lit, Damfino, Inside the Bell Jar, Blue Planet Journal, Italian Americana, Yellow Chair Review, Drowing Gull, Icarus Down Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Atticus Review, and Literary Explorer. She has published book reviews in TLR Online and has participated in an episode of No, YOU Tell It! When she isn’t writing, she enjoys hiking and reading with her young son.

Driving for Gopher

“Is this the way they do business in Alabama?” I grab the black plastic knob attached to the end of the lever, shift the transmission into gear and bounce the truck forward. I check the mirrors to confirm that my crippled vehicle follows. Finding myself behind the wheel of a large tow truck, I look over at its owner slumped against the passenger door, head tucked into the corner, already beginning to snore.

David B. Such is a left-handed mechanical engineer with nearly four decades of experience with turbines and other machinery. Off the job, he retreats to his home in the foothills of Colorado where contrasted to his industrial work environment, he appreciates close connections with his natural surroundings and enjoys reading, writing, drawing, and gardening. His essays, poetry, and drawings have appeared in The Flaneur and South 85 Literary Journal and are forthcoming in Weber—The Contemporary West, Stonecoast Review, and Korean Quarterly. Visit David at dbsuch.wordpress.com and dbsuchART.wordpress.com.

In Search of Vincent van Gogh

I sit on a hotel’s tile balcony, halfway to my destination. The midday sun lies hot on stucco walls and tile roofs. Between the buildings I see a sliver of sea; across the bay, a spine of green-sided mountains cuts the sky. Around me gulls call. All colors here are bright, clear, and strong: white like bleached bone, green the color of cactus, tiles brick-red, and the sea as blue as only blue can be described. Blue.

Naila Moreira is most often inspired by the natural world. After receiving her doctorate in geology at the University of Michigan, she worked as a journalist, environmental consultant, and Seattle Aquarium docent. She now teaches science writing at Smith College, has served as writer in residence at the Forbes Library in Northampton, MA, and will be artist in residence at the Shoals Marine Lab off the coast of New Hampshire this June. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Science News, Naugatuck River Review, Cape Rock, Pirene’s Fountain and elsewhere, and she is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Water Street (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and Gorgeous Infidelities (2014).

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

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EVENTS |12/03/2018, 09:00 am @EurosciCon | Climate Change 2018

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EVENTS |09/06/2018, 08:30 am @Holiday Inn Paris-Marne La Vallee Paris,France | Nephrology Conferences

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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