Ephesus Press

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ephesus Press aims to publish the detritus of this doomed world, the filth that piles up on the neglected byways, the silent screams freely given to the uncaring night. We also run a literary journal, the Celsus Review, which features short stories, book reviews, and other ephemera from a dismal band of terminally online outsiders.

Celsus Review

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Celsus Review is a collection of short stories, book reviews, and other literary ephemera emblematic of our transient moment. We aim to sift through the overwhelming mounds of trash that we might find something, anything of value. Reviewing books both contemporary and ancient (or indeed anything in between), the Celsus Review hopes to raise a host of works that break through the malaise of so-called modern living. Our short stories should serve to jolt you awake, to unveil the racket of acursèd modernity. The essays included should remind you that the world is infinite and unknowable yet we attempt to grasp it nonetheless. Our publishing schedule will be as erratic as the seasons, now hopelessly out of joint.

Spree!

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Author: David Patrick Gallagher
Pages: 172
ISBN: 979-8-9916364-1-4
Publication: 2025

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About the Book

In this disorienting urban fever dream, Spree! plunges readers into a hallucinatory cityscape where time dissolves and resistance takes unexpected forms. Gallagher’s prose weaves between frenetic movement and philosophical contemplation as two strangers—the verbose, unpredictable Vinegar and the watchful, enigmatic Lacey—forge an unlikely alliance amid escalating civic paranoia.

With language that pulses between stream of consciousness digressions and crystalline observation, Gallagher examines how surveillance and paramilitary presence reshape urban existence. As bell towers toll to unknown schedules and reflective surfaces multiply identities, Spree! asks what freedom might look like in spaces where even rebellion becomes spectacle.

Submissions

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We are currently accepting submissions for the Celsus Review in the form of short stories, book reviews, essays, and other literary ephemera. If you have something you think would fit, please email submissions@ephesus.press with “Celsus Review Submission” in the subject line and your attached work or proposal. Double spaced and 12 point font please, .docx or .pdf.

We are also accepting submissions for our first batch of novels. We’re not looking for massive tomes, so anything over ~300 pages is probably outside our wheelhouse for the time being. Genre fiction is fine as long as it has literary ambitions, where style is as important (or even more so) than story. Again, if you have something you think would fit, please email submissions@ephesus.press with “Novel Submission” in the subject line and your attached work. Double spaced and 12 point font please, .docx or .pdf.

The Joke

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Zachary Smiley
Pages: 190
ISBN: 979-8-9916364-0-7
Publication: 2025

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About the Book

In this haunting meditation on art, death, and intention, The Joke follows K., a failed artist whose abandoned thesis project—a grotesque mechanical puppet—has left him living with his aunt in quiet desperation. After inheriting her house following her death, K. begins meticulously constructing an elaborate suicide machine in his new apartment, all while wrestling with memories of his artistic past and contemplating an alternative plan: a final road trip to the West. As K. obsesses over the purity of his intended death, he finds himself drawn into fevered contemplations of reincarnation, quantum mechanics, and the possibility of eternal recurrence through the spinning halo of a chainsaw.