Voice is the person behind the words that speaks out to the audience… Voice is your personality and resonance flowing in print. —Utley We learn to speak very young; even before basic language is learned, an infant will vocalize sounds that range from coos of pleasure to cries of hunger. According to scholar Ellen …
What’s missing from Cirque du Rouge is pretty much anything you might expect in a tattoo shop. The buttery yellow row house on D.C.’s transitioning, quasi-hipster H Street has neighbors that include a CPA, a funeral parlor, a braiding salon, and cozy bistros. Inside, there’s no “flash” – those posters of numbered designs other tattoo …
Eleven years ago, a woman in my first MFA program said, “You’re an amazing writer. You have important things to say in ways that haven’t been said. Your biggest problem is your lack of self-confidence.” She was right. At least about the last thing. Tucked away in the heart of my soul is a small …
I. The woman in charge of fingerprinting my coworkers and me peered at my finger pads. Too dry, she said, and rubbed a clear substance on my hands. Then she led me to a small machine, a scanner, and placed the fingers of my right hand, just so, on a screen. She shook her …
A volcano of ants is under my skin. Squadron of bowling balls barrels through the ally of my mental processes. Ask me to slow down. Ask me and I may break apart – a thousand pieces of me will fly in every direction. I am waiting. I am not waiting well. Pieces of me have …
Last night as I was coming out of the bathroom, a spider ran across my carpeted bedroom floor. I picked up a tissue, and softly collected the insect, opening the door to my backyard and telling it farewell as I shook the tissue out. My grandma said it was bad luck to kill spiders in …
I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful. —Michael Cunningham (A Home at the End of the World) Traditional conceptions of gender and sexuality permeate every aspect of our society and culture, affecting not only how we see the world …
This has nothing to do with nostalgia. The day I left college I was sitting in an old English pub listening to a local musician play a cover of a song, one of those fairly uplifting tunes by a well-known band that broke up a few years ago now, you’ve probably heard it. The pub …
Continue reading “Out of Time: The Short Happy Life of The 1990s”
by Rebekah Chan All the things that you want, I’ll provideTill your footprint is swept away by the tideAnd I can wait for a while, I don’t mindYeah, I can wait for a while, ‘cause I got time[i] Yellow. The color of my underwear that night my water broke. It was mustard yellow with lace. …
Carefree Highway. Picking up the pieces of my sweet shattered dream, I wonder how the old folks are tonight. Apart from a beautiful and, for me, deeply personal ballad sung by Gordon Lightfoot that lays bare the sweet shattered dreams of my youth whenever I hear it, the lyrics have taken on renewed significance in …
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.