What does it mean to be a feminist? It’s a question you’ve likely heard before, perhaps several times. Perhaps you’ve even asked it yourself. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines feminism as “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.” A feminist, then, would be someone who believes in this theory. Simple enough, right? …
Continue reading “We Are No Birds: Being and Doing Feminism”
It has been said that art represents humanity’s collective attempt to reconcile its own existence against an otherwise cold and uncaring universe. To strip away artifice, to obliterate pretense — to provide a context through which we may hope to define, at its core, exactly what it means to be a person. Which explains why art is so often heartbreakingly, unyieldingly, sad. Because, loathe as we may be to admit it (and despite all of our attempts to the contrary), ours is a conclusively lonely existence — one fraught with sorrow, doubt, and, ultimately, disillusionment. That’s the torment heard in Juliet’s deathbed soliloquy, the longing behind the chords of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” the anguished panic pulsating through Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” And that’s the reason why, every Spring, I make sure to stock up on extra-soft, triple-ply, Kleenex-brand tissues in anticipation of the season’s most gut-wrenchingly devastating artistic offering: the premier episode of the ABC network’s hit reality television series “The Bachelorette….”
Tim Eberle is a New York based writer and comedian, like everybody else who lives in Brooklyn. His writing and performances have appeared in McSweeney’s, Splitsider, DNAinfo, Jewish Life Television, Jewlicious.com, Heeb Magazine, and the Madcap Review, among others….
I suppose when our conversation alights—precariously—on the topic of books and literature, and I benightedly ask you what your favorite novel is, you have to find something to plug up the gap. I am not unsympathetic. If someone were to ask me what my favorite hockey team was, I would probably just answer “Capitals” even though I have never even attempted to watch a hockey game in my life, televised or live, and I become irrationally irritated when Capitals fans crowd the Gallery Place Metro station on weekends.
Emily Holland is a 2014 graduate of the University of Chicago and currently lives in Frederick, Maryland. She works there for the Frederick Arts Council and is most proud, recently, of her work on the Sky Stage project. Like every writer ever, she owns cats and is addicted to black coffee. She has been published once previously in Atticus Review.
Things he lost:
- His paycheck. (“It will turn up.”)
- Work boots. (“I’m not worried. They hurt my ankles, and I can’t have steel-toed boots on the construction site anyway.”)
- Water bottle for running with his credit card and driver’s license in the zippered pocket. (This one was my fault. I was so tired after our Turkey Trot 10K on Thanksgiving that I don’t remember much of what happened before dinner at my sister’s house.)
Melissa Grunow is the author of Realizing River City (Tumbleweed Books, 2016) which won Second Place-Nonfiction in the 2016 Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, The Nervous Breakdown, New Plains Review, and Blue Lyra Review, among many others. Her essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and listed in the Best American Essays 2016 notables. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction with distinction from National University. Visit her website at melissagrunow.com or follow her on Twitter @melgrunow.
The black Lexus hovers like a stealth jet fighter in my rearview mirror. I can almost read the Armani label on the driver’s sunglasses. Hoping to convey an air of casual indifference, I lean back against the headrest. The stealth fighter swerves erratically and passes me on the right. “ASKHOW” his license plate demands before diminishing in the distance.
Melanie Lynn Griffin is a freelance writer and environmental communications specialist whose work has appeared in Sierra magazine, AARP Bulletin, and So To Speak Journal. She is a pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Maryland, and leads writing workshops and contemplative retreats. Ms. Griffin holds an MA in Nonfiction Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Her blog Writing with Spirit is at melanielynngriffin.wordpress.com.
Last night might have been the last straw, I wrote in my journal one night at the cabin. I don’t know whether I meant the last straw for all of country living, for visiting this one-room hideaway in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, or simply for that particular weekend…
Sue Eisenfeld is the author of Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal. She is also a contributing author in The New York Times Disunion: A History of the Civil War. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Washingtonian, Gettysburg Review, Still: The Journal, Hunger Mountain, and many other literary journals as well as local magazines such as Arlington, Bethesda, and Frederick magazines. Her work has been listed as a Notable Essay of the Year four times, and she is a five-time Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
The live eel is just inches away from my face. I have to make a split-second decision whether or not to touch him, but as I have a live clam in hand, I skip my turn. Many of the others standing next to me do the same; we examine the eel through the clear plastic bag that stores him and pass him on. Max, a young college student, asks if he can take the eel out of the bag of water and hold him.
“Sure,” says the Naturalist instructor. “If you can. He’s almost awake. They’re awfully slippery.”
Mary H. Fox, PhD, is a psychologist who studied literature and poetry before matriculating to undergraduate and graduate degrees in psychology. She was an associate professor of psychology at the University of Maryland and for 25 years had a psychology practice. She has published a textbook, many journal articles, and a few short stories. She is also becoming a Master Naturalist.
“Like my hair?” my brother Brad asks, standing under the funeral home awning. It’s been ten years since I’ve seen him, five since we’ve talked. He smokes a cigarette while holding two bottles of Mountain Dew. An uneven shag of dark and gray, his hair is thick except for a small bald spot. He looks awful: his two front teeth lost to decay and his glasses missing the right stem.
Indianapolis. Monday. December 22. The shortest day of the year. I’d been here the week prior for the funeral of a friend. Now I’m back for the funeral of my grandfather.
Douglas Light is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. He co-wrote The Trouble with Bliss, the screen adaptation of his debut novel East Fifth Bliss. The film stars Brie Larson, Michael C. Hall, Peter Fonda, and Lucy Liu. He received the 2010 Grace Paley Prize for his story collection Girls in Trouble. His second story collection, Blood Stories, was published in 2015. His writing has received an O. Henry Prize and two NoMAA/JPMorgan Chase grants. For more, visit: www.douglaslight.com.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, each mourner deposits his symbolic shovel of earth, and the living say goodbye to the dead. The grave is filled in and the mourners file back to their cars, back to their lives, back to their loved ones. The dead are once again left to their thoughts.
Round and round the clay on the potter’s wheel goes. A new life is formed while an old succumbs. Life is always one step ahead of death as we struggle to stay ahead, all the while knowing that, in the end, we cannot keep up the pace.
Leslie Selbst is a beginning freelance writer who spent his first forty years in government work. He has coauthored Surviving The Storm, a nonfiction story about a family’s struggle within the medical system.
I sit on the back porch, picking them out with my fingernails. They’ve embedded themselves between the layer of mesh and the layer of smooth nylon surface on the tops of my running shoes. From a distance they look like mud spatters, but they’re clusters of organic torpedoes, hundreds of them, each a centimeter long. These wild grass seeds, with their tiny grappling hooks, have hitched a ride to Virginia from a German cemetery.
I picked up these wanderers in the small town of Grünstadt in the Rhineland-Palatinate, about an hour’s drive southwest of Frankfurt. Grünstadt has a vibrant Jewish history that is documented back to the early seventeenth century. At its height, the Jewish community numbered some five hundred souls. What remains in 2012 is the neglected cemetery.
Rachel Unkefer’s work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Citron Review, and elsewhere. She has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Writers in the Heartland. She is one of the cofounders of WriterHouse, a non-profit writing community in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Essay and Other Nonfiction Workshops at Eckleburg
Personal Essay
Lyric Essay
Body Narrative
Modern Memoir
Submit Your 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.
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.