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SELFIE INTERVIEW | Dustin Grinnell

Dustin Grinnell is a writer based in Boston. His creative nonfiction and fiction combines medicine and the humanities and has appeared in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Perspectives in Biology & Medicine, New Scientist, Hektoen International, Ars Medica, The Awakenings Review, Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine, and Tendon: A Medical Humanities Creative Journal. His two novels, The Genius Dilemma and Without Limits, were self-published in 2013 and 2015. His sci-fi thriller, The Empathy Academy, is forthcoming with Atmosphere Press. He has MFA in fiction from Lasell University, and an MS in physiology from Penn State. He’s a full-time copywriter for Bose Corporation.

Eckleburg: What captures your interest most in your work, now, as a reader of your work?

Dustin Grinnell:

If I subscribe to any philosophy, it’s existentialism, a philosophical tradition that has been described as less of a school of thought and more of a mood or attitude toward life. It deals with matters such as anxiety, death, authenticity, isolation, and finding meaning in one’s existence. For better or worse, these are issues I think about often and incorporate in my writing, fiction in particular. Existentialism isn’t just a philosophy; it’s also a literary movement, led by great writers, many of whom I’ve enjoyed reading in recent years. These authors include: Jean-Paul Sartre and his novel, Nausea, and play, No Exit; Albert Camus’ novel, The Stranger, and his philosophical treatise, The Myth of Sisyphus; Fredrick Nietzsche’s novel, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and excerpts from his books; Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story, “Notes from Underground.” Often, I’m more attracted to contemporary books that popularize the literary works of these existentialists, as they make their ideas more accessible. In this regard, I’ve enjoyed reading nonfiction books like Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are, At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell, and Irrational Man by William Barrett.    

Eckleburg: What are you working on now?

Dustin Grinnell:

I’m finishing a collection of short stories titled, The Healing Book. I’m also submitting my finished collection of essays, The Dizziness of Freedom, to agents and publishers. 

Eckleburg: Who and what are your artistic influences?

Dustin Grinnell:

Michael Crichton. Alan Lightman. Friedrich Nietzsche. Kurt Vonnegut. George Orwell. Aldous Huxley. Ray Bradbury. Oliver Sacks. Edgar Allen Poe. 

Eckleburg thanks Dustin Grinnell. Do you have new work published here at Eckleburg or elsewhere? Add your Selfie Interview and share the news with our 10,000+ reading and writing community. If you have a new book out or upcoming, join our Eckleburg Book Club and let our readers know about it.

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SELFIE INTERVIEW | Jeffrey H. MacLachlan

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.

Eckleburg: What captures your interest most in your work, now, as a reader of your work?

Jeffrey H. MacLachlan: Jessa Crispin recently said that good literary work requires the writer to “control their darkness.” I never had an issue with producing dark imagery, but often struggled with the implementation of that imagery to explore deeper meanings. The discipline of the texts I produce is what interests me most.

Eckleburg: What are you working on now?

Jeffrey H. MacLachlan: I recently finished a poetry manuscript about Socialist Realism that I’m submitting to various publishers.

Eckleburg: Who and what are your artistic influences?

Jeffrey H. MacLachlan: The two poets who initially inspired me to change majors were Gertrude Stein and Russell Edson. David Lynch looms large in a lot of my work. Frank B Wilderson III is what I aim to achieve in my lyric essays.

Eckleburg thanks Jeffrey H. MacLachlan. Do you have new work published here at Eckleburg or elsewhere? Add your Selfie Interview and share the news with our 10,000+ reading and writing community. If you have a new book out or upcoming, join our Eckleburg Book Club and let our readers know about it.

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SELFIE INTERVIEW | Mercury-Marvin Sunderland

Mercury-Marvin Sunderland (he/him) is a transgender autistic gay man with Borderline Personality Disorder. He’s from Seattle and currently attends the Evergreen State College. He’s been published by University of Amsterdam’s Writer’s Block, UC Davis’ Open Ceilings, UC Riverside’s Santa Ana River Review, UC Santa Barbara’s Spectrum, and The New School’s The Inquisitive Eater. His lifelong dream is to become the most banned author in human history. He’s @RomanGodMercury on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Eckleburg: What captures your interest most in your work, now, as a reader of your work?

Mercury-Marvin Sunderland: I don’t write prose poetry pieces like this much anymore, but what I like about them is that they’re just a collection of thoughts I had for an hour. I first started doing this as an assignment for my screenwriting class and I realized that I really enjoyed it and started doing it more often. My professor told me that what I wrote for that assignment was one of his favorite things that I’d written for that class because it held so much emotion with simple observation of my surroundings. The point of the assignment was to show that I could write a good screen-style setting, so I’m proud of that. What I try to capture with these pieces is mindfulness and meditation combined with observations of nature. Lately, I’ve been submitting my academic essays more for nonfiction, but once I run out of them I think I’ll go back to writing these.

Eckleburg: What are you working on now?

Mercury-Marvin Sunderland: I’ve always been very multimedia — but now that I’m an adult, most of what I do is creative writing and visual arts. I like to write lots of things so I can have more to submit to literary magazines — nonfiction, flash fiction, poetry, comics, etc. However, I would say that my artistic forte is definitely poetry, probably because I end up writing that the most because that’s definitely the form of writing that is always in the highest demand from literary magazines. I’m trying to get more into writing comics lately because I want to work in animation and comics are essential for getting jobs in that field. In November I got to have a meeting with Rebecca Sugar (she/they), the creator of Steven Universe, to discuss my future in animation and she told me that what I need to do is draw fiction comics, print them out and make zines out of them, and then go to lots of cons and trade them around. That was how Sugar themself was hired to work on Adventure Time. So I’m using the pandemic as an opportunity to get started on those comics. Once I graduate undergrad, I’m going to move back to Seattle and get a membership with the Emerald City Comic Con, which will give me tickets to Emerald City, New York Comic Coin, and two other cons every year. That should be plenty of networking per year and I’m very excited about that. It will take at least a few years of that (that’s how it was for Sugar), but it’ll be so much fun.

Eckleburg: Who and what are your artistic influences?

Mercury-Marvin Sunderland: POETRY:

Sappho, Rupi Kaur, Anastacia Renee

FICTION:

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

VISUAL ARTS:

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, Keith Haring

COMICS:

John Cullen (@nellucnhoj on Instagram), Calvin and Hobbes, Bunny Meat (@bunnymeat on Instagram)

Eckleburg thanks Mercury-Marvin Sunderland. Do you have new work published here at Eckleburg or elsewhere? Add your Selfie Interview and share the news with our 10,000+ reading and writing community. If you have a new book out or upcoming, join our Eckleburg Book Club and let our readers know about it.