Writers Are Readers, Too, Fundraiser

Join Eckleburg in our annual, summer fundraiser….

 

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)

It’s a fantastic issue. 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

Listed among Wigleaf’s Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions 2012

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
Supporter of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts

FICTION SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

We accept previously unpublished and polished prose up to 8,000 words year round, unless announced otherwise.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

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.

ANNUAL GERTRUDE STEIN AWARD IN FICTION

1st Prize $1000 and publication. Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English no more than 8,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Stories published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Stories can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff, interns and current students of The Johns Hopkins University are not eligible for entry.

ANNUAL FRANZ KAFKA AWARD IN MAGIC REALISM

1st prize $1000 and publication. Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English and magic realism no more than 8,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Stories published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Stories can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff and interns are not eligible for entry.

NOVEL AND STORY 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.

POETRY

We are now accepting previously unpublished poetry of all forms. Please submit 1 – 5 poems as separate files in separate submissions. Please do not submit them all on one document. Submit your poetry.

Note: We consider poetry (and fiction) 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. Submit your poetry.

POETRY 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.

NONFICTION

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.

ANNUAL ANAĬS NIN AWARD IN NONFICTION

Coming soon… Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English and nonfiction no more than 5,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Essays published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Essays can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff, interns and current students of The Johns Hopkins University are not eligible for entry. Coming Soon…

ESSAY COLLECTIONS AND MEMOIR 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.

GALLERY | Visual and Intermedia Artwork

Send us a link for your online portfolio that includes all the works (at least 3, 10 or more even better) that you would like us to consider for the Gallery. You can also send a 100 to 200 word bio. If accepted, we will request attached, high resolution jpegs of the chosen works. The submissions link is below.

Music, Film and Arts Commentary | Send a YouTube link via email along with a short 100 to 200 word bio. The submissions link is below.

REVIEWS

Eckleburg is not accepting ARCs or press releases for books at this time. We do, however, offer a fantastic Review Workshop.

Some members of our editorial staff and some of our contributors write reviews for other venues such as The New York Times, Washington Post, New York Journal of Books, Washington Independent Review of Books and more and will post notices of these reviews at Eckleburg; however, our editors work directly with the outside venue editors in acquisition and assignment of these reviews. It is a common practice at these venues that reviewers review only work by authors who the reviewer does not know personally or work with personally. Please do not contact our editors about press releases or reviews of your book for Eckleburg. You should contact the review venues directly.

We are, however, very happy to consider your book for our Book Club and/or an excerpt of your published book for Eckleburg publication, please see below information at Book Club.

THE ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB

Send your book cover, publication information and short excerpt to the Eckleburg Book Club.

  • Please forward a jpeg of just the front cover, not the full jacket;
  • Do not ask us if you may send us your book cover and information, etc., just submit it through the submissions system;
  • Please forward publisher, cover artist, blurbs, a short excerpt (a chapter, short story or poem) we may run with the book, as well as all copyright information typed into the email, not as part of the back cover;
  • We are not accepting self-published books, etc. If you own the publishing company or work integrally as a regular staff editor (as opposed to guest editor) with the publishing company that published your book, Eckleburg considers your book to be self-published;
  • SUBMIT to The Eckleburg Book Club.

RIGHTS & COMPENSATION

RIGHTS | If accepted, you are granting Eckleburg first North American serial, promotional, non-exclusive anthology (online and possibly print), and archival rights. Copyright reverts to the author upon publication. If the piece is subsequently published in another venue, we ask you to source The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review as first publication. All fiction, poetry, nonfiction and visual art submissions will be considered for our annual print. Authors of works that are accepted for the print will be contacted by the editors.

PAYMENT | Print contributors receive a free copy. Print contributors who are also Eckleburg award winners receive award prize money up to $1000. Contributors will receive 60% of online purchases and Adopt a Writer donations made through their individual contributor pages.

ADOPT A CONTRIBUTOR | Support our Adopt a Contributor Program and donate 60% of your donation to this contributor. To adopt your contributor, first subscribe to our monthly or annual subscription. Then, return to your adopted contributor’s work url and sign the comments section at the bottom. Make sure to include “I’ve adopted “contributor name” in your comment. We’ll send 60% of your first month’s subscription to your contributor via PayPal! If you love fiction, poetry, nonfiction, music and art, join us in supporting our talented writers and artists. Contributors are automatically enrolled.

RESPONSES | Response times usually run three months or longer; however, we sometimes respond within the day. If we haven’t responded by six month’s time, please contact us here.

AWARDS | Editors will nominate works at appropriate times through the year. Individual authors/poets who are nominated will be contacted privately.

WITHDRAWALS | Please withdraw your submission through your personal Submittable account created upon submitting. This is your personal account and Eckleburg editors do not have access to it.

THE SELFIE INTERVIEW | All contributors past, present and future are invited to complete The Selfie Interview. The Selfie Interview is also open to contributors as well as readers/writers who have not been published at Eckleburg. Share your Selfie Interview with our 10,000+ and growing Eckleburg community.

ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB | Open to all writers, readers and contributors. (Currently not accepting self-published titles.) Submit to the Eckleburg Book Club and share your title with our 10,000+ and growing Eckleburg community.

EVENTS LISTING | Open to all writers, readers and contributors. Have a reading coming up? A gallery showing or performance? Shout it out to our 10,000+ Eckleburg community.

Submit to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review

 

Please Check Out Our Free Submissions Guidelines Workshop

SUBMISSIONS OPEN: SUBMITTERS 

ARE READERS, TOO, FUNDRAISER

Purchase a copy of Eckleburg No. 19 and submit to Eckleburg while supporting your favorite contributor!

GS AWARD SUBMISSIONS OPEN

ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB OPEN

SELFIE INTERVIEWS OPEN

 

“It’s a fantastic issue. 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

Listed among Wigleaf’s Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions 2012

“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

 

CLMP Member Logo Cropped  

Small-Vida-Logo

Proud member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.

Supporter of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts.

Subscribe to the Eckleburg Newsletter 

Advertise with Us

Submit Your Event

  

NOTICE BOARD 

READ. If you plan to submit work to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, please read the journal first. Read not just one story but several. Eckleburg is eclectic, literary mainstream to innovative. There’s no way to sum us up in one story or even a single issue. SUBMISSION PHILOSOPHY. At Eckleburg, we recognize that writers grow in their crafts the more they read and write. If we do not accept your submission, it does not mean we will not accept a later submission. We do sometimes give personal feedback on declined submissions, though, this is not often, and should not discourage you from submitting to us again. We simply receive too many submissions to provide personalized feedback to everyone. FUNDRAISERS. During the winter and summer months, Eckleburg will shut down regular submissions and offer our SUBMITTERS ARE READERS FUNDRAISER where submitters/readers can support Eckleburg‘s nonprofit mission by purchasing a print or digital copy while submitting. Thank you to our submitters, readers and contributors for your support of Eckleburg. We are honored to have you. 

 

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. The submissions link is at the bottom of this page. Please check out our free “Submissions Guidelines Workshop” prior to submitting.

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.

ANNUAL GERTRUDE STEIN AWARD IN FICTION 

1st Prize $1000 and publication. Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English no more than 8,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Stories published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Stories can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff, interns and current students of The Johns Hopkins University are not eligible for entry. READ MORE & SUBMIT FOR THE GS AWARD HERE

ANNUAL FRANZ KAFKA AWARD IN MAGIC REALISM 

1st prize $1000 and publication. Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English and magic realism no more than 8,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Stories published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Stories can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff, interns and current students of The Johns Hopkins University are not eligible for entry. READ MORE & SUBMIT FOR THE FK AWARD HERE.

NOVEL AND STORY 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.

POETRY

We are now accepting previously unpublished poetry of all forms. Please submit 1 – 5 poems as separate files in separate submissions. Please do not submit them all on one document. Please check out our free “Submissions Guidelines Workshop” prior to submitting.

Note: We consider poetry (and fiction) 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 ReviewThe submissions link is below.

POETRY 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.

 

NONFICTION

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. Please check out our free “Submissions Guidelines Workshop” prior to submitting.

ANNUAL ANAĬS NIN AWARD IN NONFICTION

Coming soon… Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English and nonfiction no more than 5,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Essays published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Essays can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff, interns and current students of The Johns Hopkins University are not eligible for entry. Coming Soon…

ESSAY COLLECTIONS AND MEMOIR 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.

 

GALLERY | Visual and Intermedia Artwork 

Send us a link for your online portfolio that includes all the works (at least 3, 10 or more even better) that you would like us to consider for the Gallery. You can also send a 100 to 200 word bio. If accepted, we will request attached, high resolution jpegs of the chosen works. The submissions link is below.

 Music, Film and Arts Commentary | Send a YouTube link via email along with a short 100 to 200 word bio. The submissions link is below. 

 

REVIEWS

Eckleburg is not accepting ARCs or press releases for books at this time. Some members of our editorial staff and some of our contributors write reviews for other venues such as The New York TimesWashington PostNew York Journal of Books, Washington Independent Review of Books and more and will post notices of these reviews at Eckleburg; however, our editors work directly with the outside venue editors in acquisition and assignment of these reviews. It is a common practice at these venues that reviewers review only work by authors who the reviewer does not know personally or work with personally. Please do not contact our editors about press releases or reviews of your book for Eckleburg. You should contact the review venues directly. We are, however, very happy to consider your book for our Book Club and/or an excerpt of your published book for Eckleburg publication, please see below information at Book Club. Please check out our free “Submissions Guidelines Workshop” prior to submitting. We also offer several review writing workshops.

 

THE ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB

Send your book cover, publication information and short excerpt to the Eckleburg Book Club.

  • Please forward a jpeg of just the front cover, not the full jacket;
  • Do not ask us if you may send us your book cover and information, etc., just submit it through the submissions system;
  • Please forward publisher, cover artist, blurbs, a short excerpt (a chapter, short story or poem) we may run with the book, as well as all copyright information typed into the email, not as part of the back cover;
  • We are not accepting self-published books, etc. If you own the publishing company or work integrally as a regular staff editor (as opposed to guest editor) with the publishing company that published your book, Eckleburg considers your book to be self-published;
  • SUBMIT to The Eckleburg Book Club.

 

RIGHTS & COMPENSATION

RIGHTS | If accepted, you are granting Eckleburg first North American serial, promotional, non-exclusive anthology (online and possibly print), and archival rights. Copyright reverts to the author upon publication. If the piece is subsequently published in another venue, we ask you to source The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review as first publication. All fiction, poetry, nonfiction and visual art submissions will be considered for our annual print. Authors of works that are accepted for the print will be contacted by the editors. 

PAYMENT | Print contributors receive a free copy. Print contributors who are also Eckleburg award winners receive award prize money up to $1000.

ADOPT A WRITER | We are running the Adopt a Writer program, where writers, poets and artists published in our online archives can sign up and receive 60% of reader gifts made through the individual contributor’s work url. To participate, the contributor must have a PayPal email and account. Contributors can sign up upon acceptance and also afterward on their site url page. If you have a work published at Eckleburg, go to your work’s url and submit your information there.

RESPONSES | Response times are now running three months or longer. If we haven’t responded by six month’s time, please send us an email here.

AWARDS | Editors will nominate works at appropriate times through the year. Individual authors/poets who are nominated will be contacted privately.

WITHDRAWALS | Please withdraw your submission through your personal Submittable account created upon submitting. This is your personal account and Eckleburg editors do not have access to it.

THE SELFIE INTERVIEW | All contributors past, present and future are invited to complete The Selfie Interview. The Selfie Interview is also open to readers/writers who have not been published at Eckleburg.

 

SUBMISSIONS OPEN: SUBMITTERS ARE READERS, TOO, FUNDRAISER

Purchase a copy of Eckleburg No. 19 and submit to Eckleburg while supporting your favorite contributor!

 

CLMP Member Logo Cropped 

Small-Vida-Logo

Proud member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.

Supporter of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts

Subscribe to the Eckleburg Newsletter 

Advertise with Us

Submit Your Event

 

   

Ask the Editors | Ouch! Form Rejection Letters

RaeBryant-Bryant__Editor_in_Chief-rae_bryant_iiDear Editors,

Five rejections, five form letters. My head hurts.

Truly,

Ouch!

 

Hi Ouch!

Yes, five rejections. We were surprised you had submitted more than one work at a time because we ask specifically in our guidelines to submit only one work at a time through our regular fiction submissions. You can submit more than one through our Gertrude Stein Award but you had submitted through regular fiction. We’ll be happy to read more work from you but we do ask that you pay close attention to our submission guidelines.

With that said, we do understand the hurt and difficulty of having work declined, which is the word we prefer to use. Declined. Rejection is such a loaded word. Declined is a much more accurate way of saying, we value the opportunity to read your work and thank you for trusting us with it. It just wasn’t for us. Perhaps a future work will be and we wish you the best in extending this work to other journals.

We are a volunteer staff and work very hard to publish Eckleburg and offer an unsolicited submissions opportunity, which is not a requirement of journals but rather a service many journals offer because finding new voices we love as editors is important to many of us. Some journals charge a fee for unsolicited submissions year-round. We do not, though, we run our Submitters are Readers Too fundraiser in order to help cover operational costs and raise awareness of our print and digital issues and the fantastic contributors published within them.

On form declines. Yes, they are difficult to receive. We know. The truth of it is journals are not only artistic outreaches but also businesses. Our staff are real people who really read your submissions. We receive many submissions and so our time is limited in how much we can spend on unsolicited submissions while publishing the journal, tending to our families, writing our own stories and novels, as well as teaching classes, etc. We must manage our time strategically in order to make the journal sustainable. We’ve seen too many fantastic journals fall under because of talented and well-meaning editors over-extending their services and their abilities to sustain. For this reason, we do not often give personal detailed feedback. We do sometimes but not always. We will sometimes offer “we did like something” general feedback which means we did like something but because we are not a workshop submissions basis, we do not feel it our place or responsibility to instruct submitters on how to change their stories to suit our ideas of perfection. We are not the end all of aesthetics, though, we try to be very eclectic. Offering personal feedback on works that we haven’t fallen in love with would be like that guy or girl in high school who was into you but decided you weren’t the one for him or her because your laugh was a certain way or because you wore Lee jeans instead of Levis and so he or she tried to change your laugh or jeans brand in hopes of finding you more attractive. What a dick.

Remember this “love,” this artistic aesthetic and preference is very subjective. No editor is completely objective and we feel editors should never claim to be. Therefore, one journal’s response to one work does not in any way validate or invalidate a work. Aficion comes with preference. It would be irresponsible of us to instruct submitters on how to write their stories “better” when really we would be instructing submitters on how to write stories “our better.” Again, Levis instead of Lees. If you like to write Lees, go for it! In fact, once you have formed your Lees so perfectly to your butt and thighs and calves and have perfectly worn out the knees, we might even find that we like Lees too! But changing your Lees to suit us is not the craft of an editor. Change must come from within the writer. Even a single line of constructive feedback, though well meaning, can derail a direction a writer was on and potentially kill what would otherwise have been a fantastic end product. If we had the time to sit and have coffee and debate and discuss the values of Lees and Levis with you and how they fit into your craft overall and in your story specifically then perhaps we would be that writing feedback you deserve. We are able to do this for you in our Eckleburg Workshops but not in our submissions system. We consider personal feedback to be appropriate in workshop venues and/or in response to a submission only when a work is so close to our perfection already that we cannot forget it, whether or not we felt the work met its full potential or not. 

FIRST RULE: Be true to your voice and then read, read, read Eckleburg and if you love us and still want us so badly you stay up at night fantasizing about us then keep reading and writing until your work and Eckleburg have become so simpatico that we are lovers meant to be. We hope to one day be this for you but we understand if we are not. There are many journals and many editors from which to choose and we would encourage you to stick with the same plan. Read, read, read that journal until you decide you are meant to be or not. Either way, the onus is on the writer to decide if his or her work suits the journal and vice versa after reading the journal obsessively. Really. Read it obsessively. No better way. Unless an editor solicits you, which is very cool. We do solicit sometimes if an editor finds a writer and craft we adore. If we do end up providing personal feedback at some point then fantastic but it shouldn’t be a determining factor. One story might not strike us at all and then the next story might hit so perfectly we’re astounded. Such is the way of it sometimes.

You might read this and think, they could have given me personal feedback on my story faster than typing this letter! And you would be right. But again, we do not use our submissions system for “teaching” writers how to write for Eckleburg. We feel that would be arrogant of us and would not respect the first priority to individual voice and development. We have workshops, yes, but our focus there is teaching writers to write for their own voices, not Eckleburg. Focus of voice and Eckleburg sometimes coincides, yes, but we neither expect it nor require it at our workshops.

All of us at Eckleburg are writers as well as editors and we approach our responsibilities with sincere interest and energy. We consider it an honor to be trusted with your work. We hope that one day your work and our work find that relationship we all want so very much but we’re willing to wait for it. You are worth the wait. We hope we are worth the wait for you, too.

Thank you for your input. I believe your time will be better served reading Eckleburg to see if it is in fact the best market for you. If you believe we are then I suggest you thoroughly read our guidelines and submit accordingly. And remember we are only a handful of minds and hearts trying to do our best for a wide readership. Because our submitters and contributors are first and foremost Eckleburg readers, we know you understand. 

All best,

Rae Bryant

Editor in Chief