Join Us for AWP 2017 Eckleburg Contributor Signings at Booth #389

2/9/17 9:00:00 AM Jacob Appel
2/9/17 10:00:00 AM Bradley Babendir
2/9/17 10:00:00 AM David Atkinson
2/9/17 11:00:00 AM Laurie Foos
2/9/17 11:00:00 AM Philip Dean Walker
2/9/17 1:00:00 PM Sandi Sonnenfeld
2/9/17 2:00:00 PM Sheila McMullin
2/9/17 3:00:00 PM Melissa Grunow
2/9/17 3:00:00 PM Shanee Stepakoff
2/9/17 4:00:00 PM Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
2/10/17 10:00:00 AM Meg Eden
2/10/17 10:00:00 AM Michal Lemberger
2/10/17 11:00:00 AM Ben Tanzer
2/10/17 12:00:00 PM Laura Ellen Scott
2/10/17 12:00:00 PM Townsend Walker
2/10/17 1:00:00 PM Donald Berger
2/10/17 1:00:00 PM Gary Dop
2/10/17 2:00:00 PM Charlotte Covey
2/10/17 2:00:00 PM Meg Eden
2/10/17 3:00:00 PM Jen Fitzgerald
2/10/17 3:00:00 PM Kelly Fordon
2/10/17 3:00:00 PM Leah Umansky
2/10/17 4:00:00 PM Susan Lewis
2/11/17 10:00:00 AM Nat Schmookler
2/11/17 11:00:00 AM Cheyenne Autry
2/11/17 11:00:00 AM Christine Stoddard
2/11/17 11:00:00 AM Sinta Jimenez
2/11/17 12:00:00 PM Katie Cortese
2/11/17 12:00:00 PM Lale Davidson
2/11/17 1:00:00 PM Cynthia Atkins
2/11/17 1:00:00 PM Michael Coene
2/11/17 2:00:00 PM Vimi Bajaj
2/11/17 4:00:00 PM Lauren Hilger
What others are saying about Eckleburg
 
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.

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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 ReviewOur aesthetic is eclectic, literary mainstream to experimental. 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 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 fictionpoetrynonfiction, 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.

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 YorkKGB BarBrazenhead BooksNew World Writing (formerly Mississippi Review Online), The Hopkins ReviewBoulevardGargoyle MagazineEntasis PressBarrelhouseHobart826DCDC 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.

Rarely will readers/viewers find a themed issue at Eckleburg, but rather a mix of eclectic works. It is Eckleburg’s intention to represent writers, artists, musicians, and comedians as a contemporary and noninvasive collective, each work evidence of its own artistry, not as a reflection of an editor’s vision of what an issue “should” be. Outside of kismet and special issues, Eckleburg will read and accept unsolicited submissions based upon individual merit, not theme cohesiveness. It is our intention to create an experience in which readers and viewers can think artistically, intellectually, socially, and independently. We welcome brave, honest voices. To submit, please read our guidelines.

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

Doll Palace

In this brilliantly rendered, LA Times Book Prize nominated debut collection, Sara Lippmann draws the reader into the intimate lives of characters seeking connection beyond their scripted worlds. She captures the beguiling transformation from child to adult with humor, heartache, and desperation. From grieving mothers to fathers adrift, old flames to restless teens, isolated characters in Doll Palace are united by conflicting desires and the private struggles of the heart. A girl ditches her innocence at a state fair. Strippers ponder love over a Brazilian wax. A father falls for a drug-addled babysitter. A mother ends a pregnancy. Doll Palace dwells in the harder-edged territories of human compassion, navigating the powerful, often unsettling ground rarely spoken of with awareness, care, and grace. Doll Palace is that rare collection that invites imitation but leaves a vast majority wondering how she did it.

ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB | Lost in Space by Ben Tanzer

LOST_SPACE_4Ben

 

Lost in Space by Ben Tanzer

Lost in Space is a sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but always lively essay collection about fathers and sons, and their relationship to not only one another, but pop culture, death, and sex—because sex sells, even if you’re otherwise focused on parenting and the generation spanning cultural impact of Star Wars.

The essays in Lost in Space are focused on an array of child-rearing topics including sleep, discipline, first haircuts, deceased parents/grandparents and illness, and the inherent challenges and humor that coincide with, and are intrinsically tied-into, these stages of life. The essays also recognize the ongoing presence of the author’s dead father in his life even as he seeks to parent without his father’s guidance or advice.

 

Blurbs

“Ben Tanzer explodes the myths of fatherhood and reassembles the pieces into something altogether more precious and fascinating: the truth. The ugly, gorgeous, shameful, miraculous, transformative truth. This book is both funny and heartbreaking, and at times I thought he was transcribing directly from my own parent brain. Tanzer has a rare talent for making the everyday seem luminous.” —Jillian Lauren, NY Times bestselling author of Some Girls: My Life in a Harem and Pretty

“In Lost in Space, Tanzer manages to be both heartbreaking and funny, producing a book of beauty and truth about the complexity, the fear, pain, and primal love that being a parent entails. Tanzer raises the bar with this memoir, insisting that writers be truly honest, not make excuses for their feelings, to stare deep inside themselves, and still be entertaining, if not enlightening.” —Paula Bomer, author of Nine Months and Baby

“Ben Tanzer has that ever elusive elixir, that ability to be both funny and poignant simultaneously. These essays have that requisite gallows humor about being a parent, but there’s tenderness oozing from the page, too, a kind of trickling empathy.” —Joshua Mohr, author of Fight Song, Termite Parade, Some Things That Meant the World to Me and Damascus 

“They said it couldn’t be done. They said, “nobody dunks on Bill Cosby in the basketball court of dad-lit.” And then Ben Tanzer’s Lost in Space arrived. Funnier, more honest and a million times more relevant than the writing of JELL-O’s favorite son, this tight little collection cuts to the soul of fathering children like nothing else.” —Patrick Wensink, Bestselling author of Broken Piano for President.

“Ben Tanzer’s Lost In Space will have you vacillating between laughter and despair, all the while reveling in the beauty of his razor-sharp prose and candid, witty observations on fatherhood, sleep deprivation, Patrick Ewing, and family life. Buy this book, yo. And prepare to be astonished. —Jennifer Banash, author of White Lines and Silent Alarm

 

Publisher Information & Purchase Links:

Publisher: Curbside Splendor
Page Count: 200
Cover Price: $14.95
Size: 5 x 8
Release Date: March 2014
ISBN: 978-0988480469

Discussion Questions:

  1. What kinds of rules do you have about writing about your kids?
  2. Have your kids read any of the essays?
  3. Do you seek to balance humor and pain in your work?
  4. Why do you use pop culture as a reference point?
  5. Who are you inspirations?
  6. Have you no shame?

 


tiny_tanzer

Ben Tanzer is the author of the books My Father’s House, You Can Make Him Like You, So Different Now, Orphans and Lost in Space, among others. Ben serves as Director of Publicity and Content Strategy at Curbside Splendor and can be found online at This Blog Will Change Your Life, the center of his growing lifestyle empire. He lives in Chicago with his wife and two sons.