Eckleburg Book Club

“A recent survey of small press publishing by a Calyx intern revealed only twenty-five percent of those published are women. . . In contrast is the percentage of women on the list of contributors to Gargoyle, the annual literary magazine edited by Lucinda Ebersole and Richard Peabody in Arlington, Virginia, which is also celebrating thirty years in print. At least 45 percent of the writers who have had work published in Gargoyle since 1976 are women, including Kathy Acker, Rita Dove, Jennifer Egan, Shelley Jackson, and Naomi Shihab Nye. But Gargoyle, which has also published the likes of T.C. Boyle, Russell Edson, Allen Ginsberg, Ben Marcus, and Rick Moody, doesn’t make any declarations about gender distinctions. The cover of its anniversary issue, also released in August, features an illustration by Patricia Storms that pretty well sums up thirty years of work by a magazine that doesn’t take itself too seriously: A UFO indiscriminantly beams up its cargo, including toilet paper, a telephone, a rat, a cat, a drumstick, a brassiere, a granny with a book, and Frankenstein with a typewriter. God bless literary magazines with a sense of humor.”
– Kevin Larimer, Poets & Writers Magazine