Fiction

Hail, the Eye

Colin Fleming | Gilbert, My first thought, naturally, was what to do with my urine. For such is life in a pit, brother of mine.

Syntagm

We are fifteen when we create our first language. It is a cipher, a tongue we make by altering our first language, which we did not create. Old words, new meanings. Things that appeal to adolescent poets, adolescent boys—long-haired flannel kids in corners who take more meaning from things like song lyrics than they should. …

Commute

Erik Smetana | On Tuesday, I saw a house, a low slung brick bungalow with the kind of sixties design aesthetic that is hard to miss.

Black Angel

Gabriel Valjan | It began with a burning soreness and difficulty swallowing on one side of the throat. It was as odd as seeing it rain on one side of the street.

Man Like That

Summer 2011 Prosetry Contest Winner I have stories to tell, he says, his diamond eye sparkling in the bright sun. I can hardly believe I would get in a car with a man like that man. Blasting along, wind whipping hair, he’s saying words as fast as he can spit them out, I’m looking with …

Prophecy as a Reducing Mathematical Certainty

Spring 2011 Prosetry Winner These are the tiny wanderings that core the heart in spectacular revelations and inspirations and allusions, and all of it getting up, standing up, leaping up and wanting more than anything to staunch the disjuncts and disparities between the things that our hands can hold and the things that want more …

The Soul Shoppe

Nathaniel Tower | Darrel Donaldson rolled through the white-tiled hallway in the wheelchair the nurse had given him the day before.

Or Do You Love It?

Meg Pokrass | The darkness was in early now, and she said she looked like a Holstein with her black and white jacket. Men walked by and smiled at me, not her.

Loteria

Lisa Marie Basile | Everyone kept talking about that damn elevator. What’s so great about that elevator?

Permanent

Marjorie Maddox | Before the paramedics arrive, the father tucks in his four-year-old daughter and surrounds her with twenty-two stuffed animals and assorted photographs. In five, she is sitting in his lap.

Eckleburg Workshops in Fiction

Short Story Workshop

Short Short Story Workshop

Novel: From Start to Finish Workshop

Magic Realism Workshop

Writing Sex in Literary Fiction: Are Your Sex Scenes Essential or Gratuitous?

View All Fiction Workshops

About Eckleburg Fiction

Eckleburg runs online, daily content of original fiction and hybrid including work from Richard Peabody, Cris Mazza, Eurydice, Rick Moody, Steve Almond and more…. Read hard. Write hard. “Being a good lit citizen means supporting lit pubs. Donate. Buy. I’m going to show some #AWP17 mags that you need to support…”

FICTION SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

We accept previously unpublished and polished prose up to 8,000 words year round, unless announced otherwise.  We are always looking for tightly woven short works under 2,000 words and short-shorts around 500 words. No multiple submissions but simultaneous is fine as long as you withdraw the submission asap through the submissions system. During the summer and winter months, we run our Writers Are Readers, Too, fundraiser when submissions are open only to subscribers. During the fall and spring, we open submissions for regular unsolicited submissions.

Note: We consider fiction, poetry and essays that have appeared in print, online magazines, public forums, and public access blogs as already being published. Rarely do we accept anything already published and then only by solicitation. We ask that work published at Eckleburg not appear elsewhere online, and if republished in print, original publication credit is given to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. One rare exception is our annual Gertrude Stein Award, which allows for submissions of previously published work, both online and print.

 

ANNUAL GERTRUDE STEIN AWARD IN FICTION

1st Prize $1000 and publication. Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English no more than 8,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Stories published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Stories can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff, interns and current students of The Johns Hopkins University are not eligible for entry.

 

ANNUAL FRANZ KAFKA AWARD IN MAGIC REALISM

1st prize $1000 and publication. Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English and magic realism no more than 8,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Stories published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Stories can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff and interns are not eligible for entry. Submissions for the Franz Kafka Award are currently closed.

 

NOVEL AND STORY COLLECTION MANUSCRIPTS

We publish short works at Eckleburg. At this time, we do not publish novel, long memoir, essay collections, story collections or poetry collections. 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. 

Proud member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses
Supporter of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts