When the roommate arrives home, resist the impulse to bolt upstairs to your room before his key unlocks the door. Remain in the kitchen only because you haven’t finished filling — to the brim — the bowl of ice cream that you’re scooping next to the open freezer door. Try to be friendly, but not too talkative because ice cream melts fast and there is a 19 Kids and Counting marathon on the bedroom television upstairs.
Ignore his comments about being in your pajamas at 7:30 or eating ice cream for dinner. Remind yourself that he pays rent for his bedroom, not for the right to judge you. Shrug your shoulders and murmur something sarcastic. Make small talk, if possible. Keep scooping. Press the ice cream down to make more room in the bowl. Multi-task: scooping, chatting, scooping, chatting. Stay focused on your goal.
It’s 4:19 am. I’m hungry, again, so I grab some cashews and blanched almonds and go back to bed, the stillness in the room on par with the same calm inside. I close my eyes and try to exhale to a count of at least eight. They say that longer exhales increase the amount of …
She is the most beautiful dead woman I have ever seen. Her lashes, long and thick, kiss her magnificent cheekbones. Brown hair billows around her shapely face. She is stylish, lean legs thrust into fur boots, head crowned with a jauntily tilted hat. When I first see her picture, I am slouched in my doctor’s office, …
Before the snow fell I was chased by a crazy man, an accomplishment of which none of us should be proud, but we tell our tales of survival, words adhering to our clothing like red, blue, green and purple badges of courage. Before the snow fell I was chased and chastised by a truly insane …
Mystery was many years ago part of an unpublishable pseudo-modernist monster (it called itself a novel, but no one was fooled). There was a young woman in the book, besieged by what gets lazily called ‘daddy issues,’ and this piece was part of my attempt to explain those issues and the havoc they caused. I was tired of rape and abuse as back-story tropes — they’re horrifyingly common but they aren’t answers, they aren’t stories, just crimes — and I was trying to create something that specifically positioned the character for who she was. It’s an extension of the game I play at every bar I go to — sometimes with my wife, or with friends, and sometimes alone — and I guess why my fellow drinkers are drinking. Especially the ones that are smiling, like me in my author photo: fake recognizes fake.
Parting is all we need to know of hell. –Emily Dickinson Among all of the emotions we can have, love is one of the most exhilarating and powerful. Hormones associated with love include dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, adrenaline, vasopressin, testosterone, and estrogen—all of which are part of the brain’s reward system and are responsible for regulating …
During my first time in an ambulance, I wasn’t sure if my brother was alive, or if he was unconscious, or if he was just being really quiet. Just before the accident, I was reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the front passenger seat. I had come home late the night before from playing in a JV basketball …
JASON DUFFY EATS YOUR FRIENDS (and I do love it stylized in all-caps — it looks so much more ridiculous that way) has been a passion project for me. On its surface, it’s the story of a fat, agoraphobic, naive but gentle man named Ray. But to me, this story has always been about what …
I’m sure I saw the light dimming and the trees outside swooning, swimming. I could, perhaps, blame it on the jungle. On the disorientations of being so close to the equator, on the suffocation of being wrapped in strangler figs, on the isolation of being in a land where my words didn’t land. But there …
Some of my stories have interesting backstories, but in this case, I just heard Lily’s voice inside my head, her insistence that she was permanently in the right. I had to put it on paper. I drew the idea partly from a family story about a woman who threatened to kidnap her grandkids. One of …
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.