Essays

Bards Behaving Badly: The Pulitzer Prize Fight

  “It was almost as if each [Mailer] book was a round in a fight.” E.L. Doctorow, Norman Mailer’s editor   “What you have with a fight is what you have with writing: … the ring, the page; the punch, the word… the sweat, the edit… the bell, the deadline….the showoff shuffle, the mingled blood …

Bards Behaving Badly: The 4-Minute Bell

  “My writing is nothing, my boxing is everything.” Ernest Hemingway   “The minute he began to have some sort of obligation to you of love or friendship… then is when he had to kill you.” Donald Ogden Stewart, Hemingway friend   In The Torrents of Spring, Hemingway dismissed his contemporaries collectively as “pretentious fakes.” As …

Bards Behaving Badly: The Three Stooges vs. The Man In Full

   “I think of the three of them now as Larry, Curly & Moe.” Tom Wolfe, of John (Updike), John (Irving) & Norman (Mailer)   A century and a half after the Poe/English bout, three pedigreed but aging novelists shanked a colleague shorter than the Baltimore bete noire, but with a larger tongue and following. …

Bards Behaving Badly: Talking Trash

  “Poe’s jealousy of other writers amounted to a mania.” Frederick Saunders, biographer of Edgar Allan Poe   Dueling preceding boxing, headbutting, and backstabbing as the gentleman’s way of resolving literary and extra-literary disputes. After publishing Pleasures and Days, Marcel Proust challenged critic Jean Lorrain to a duel for a review depicting him as “one of …

Bards Behaving Badly: “FTBSITTD”

“I don’t think writers are comfortable in each other’s presence. We can talk, of course, for five minutes or so, but I don’t think we want to socialize.” Joseph Heller                       The last half of the 19th century was enlivened by a literary free-for-all in …

SPOTLIGHT | Possessed in Serbia

When I lived in Serbia, there was nothing I hated more than going to Serbian villages. They were a symbol of boredom to a young city girl hungry for the exciting, different, sophisticated, skyscraper-and-concrete world outside of Serbia. But now that I have lived in the United States for ten years and traveled through half …

Bards Behaving Badly: Paper Lion Prize Fights

“It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.” W. Somerset Maugham While writers have long battled publishers, editors, and critics, many have fought even more fiercely with the competition – themselves. If editorial rejection is maddening, peer criticism can be even more infuriating. This is particularly true in the U.S. where competition is …

Body Narrative: Writing the Story of Your Body

We take these sounds as testimony: violin, skin, tongue. Our bodies know these testimonies as beauty. –Susan Griffin Words have mysterious and profound power. The process of writing can be life changing and therapeutic. Research suggests that expressive writing can improve health and well being. Dr. James Pennebaker, the premier researcher in the area of …

Body Narrative: Writing the Story of Your Body

Our bodies conceptualize not only themselves but also each other, murmuring: Yes, you are there; yes, you are you; yes, you can love and be loved. –Nancy Mairs, from “Body in Trouble” (2011)   What is Body Narrative? Body narrative is simply writing the story of our bodies. In this type of writing, we blur the …

ESSAYS | Layers of Energy

Ashley Inguanta discusses her art with Eckleburg. Her works are on exhibit at the Eckleburg Gallery. She invites us to consider layers and energies that embody us.   I want to shape a moment for you: Twentynine Palms, California desert. 2011. Mid-morning.  Lava-rock mountains surround. I drive, dirt rising from the road, cakelike. I open …

Essay and Other Nonfiction Workshops at Eckleburg

Personal Essay

Lyric Essay

Body Narrative

Modern Memoir

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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.