SmokeLong publishes flash narratives--fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid (somewhere between fiction and non-fiction)--up to 1000 words. We do not consider poetry.
Include the word count and a print-ready, third-person bio with your cover letter. We prefer a simple cover letter.
Please remove all identifying information from your story’s document. Guest Editors and staff Submissions Editors read blind and have no access to bios. Also note that submissions editors have no access to Submittable messages. If you need to make changes to your submission, please withdraw and resubmit your work.
Please send ONE previously unpublished piece at a time and wait until you hear our decision before sending another.
Please allow us up to two weeks to inform you if we have accepted your work for publication. You will usually hear from us sooner.
Simultaneous submissions are considered. Please inform us immediately if your work has been accepted somewhere else for publication.
Beginning in January 2023 we pay $100/story, upon publication in the quarterly issue. Payment will be issued via PayPal or Zelle, and the writer may be responsible for any associated fees if applicable.
If you are seeking feedback on your submission, please see the forms "SmokeLong General Submissions with Feedback" or "Senior Editor Critique." This service is subsidized by SmokeLong. The editors giving feedback earn more than you're paying. This is one way SmokeLong is trying to keep feedback reasonably priced while also helping us provide income for talented editors. If you are taking part in SmokeLong Fitness, please be sure to use the discount links in the workshop. From February 1 to April 30 we'll be considering paid feedback submissions for our September 2024 issue.
If you choose to make a donation to SmokeLong using the tip jar feature, thank you so much! Your contribution will help the journal remain a paying market. While it will not influence our decision regarding your submission, it will influence our love for you. We also offer readers the possibility of donating to SmokeLong directly on the website.
We can't wait to read your words.
--The SmokeLong Team
You Need to Know:
SmokeLong publishes flash narratives--fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid (somewhere between fiction and nonfiction)--up to 1000 words. This word limit is firm. We do not consider poetry.
Please send ONE previously unpublished narrative at a time and wait until you hear from us before sending another. We do not consider multiple submissions. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please consider that we usually reply within a couple of weeks (and usually much sooner). That's not long to wait for a reply.
Include a print-ready, third-person bio and the word count of your submission as your cover letter. There is no need to include a personal note in your cover letter. We will not see it.
Please do not include your name or other identifying information anywhere on the story document, in the filename, or in the Submittable title. Your name and bio should appear ONLY in the cover letter on Submittable, which is hidden in our blind editing process. We believe that the unpublished, unknown writer should have equal footing with the established writer. If you need to let us know that a narrative is fiction, nonfiction or hybrid, please put this information directly at the top of the story document. Please be aware that recent changes at Submittable mean that you might be referred to as "Applicant" in our automated responses. We know you're not an applicant.
We are a scrappy bunch with lots of reading experience under our belts, but if you are submitting a narrative to us that includes (sexual) violence, we would appreciate a content warning at the top of your submission.
We pay $100/story, upon publication in the quarterly issue. Payment will be issued via PayPal, and the writer may be responsible for any associated fees if applicable.
Online Rights: If we publish your work, we require exclusive electronic rights to it for 3 months and non-exclusive rights indefinitely so we can include it in our online archives.
Print Rights: We require non-exclusive print rights, for potential anthologies and promotional materials. All other rights remain yours.
You Might Want to Know Before Submitting:
As with any literary journal, the best way to understand what we're looking for is to read the journal. We have thousands of stories archived on our site. Why not spend a couple of hours browsing the quarterly issues from the last 20 years? The SLQ aesthetic remains an ever-changing, ever-elusive set of principles, but it most likely has to do with these kinds of things:
* language that surprises and excites,
* narratives that strive toward something other than a final punch line or twist,
* pieces that add up to something, often (but not necessarily always) meaning or emotional resonance,
* honest work that feels as if it has far more purpose than a writer wanting to write a clever story.
We publish spring, summer, fall and winter quarterly issues, featuring each story with an interview in the subsequent weeks. Our intent is to respond as quickly as possible. Please allow us two weeks to inform you if we have accepted your work for publication. Rejection will sadly come much more swiftly. (Note: Our emails sometimes get caught by spam filters, so please add "smokelong.com" to your allow list. We also can't respond to any third-party spam filter programs, so please don't submit to us with an email address that has that kind of security set up.)
We gladly consider simultaneous submissions, but please consider where you'd like your work to appear before you send it to 10 journals. We work hard to respond within 7 days. Please inform us immediately if your work has been accepted elsewhere for publication.
Finally, if you appreciate what SmokeLong does to further the art of flash, please consider making a donation through the tip jar feature, either here on Submittable or on the site itself. Although we don't charge our readers to subscribe or our potential contributors to submit, we are a paying market ($100 per narrative!). A tip jar donation is a much appreciated thumbs-up, and we are so grateful for your generosity.
Our decision regarding your submission is, however, in no way influenced by whether or not you donate. We also offer general feedback from three of our senior editors for $24 or detailed feedback from one senior editor for $39. If you're interested in receiving feedback on your work, please have a look at these options in Submittable. Check out our shop for our current workshops.
We look forward to your words. Before you hit SEND, please make sure your name is removed from the story and that your word count is 1000 or fewer.
Christopher Allen
A SmokeLong Summer 24 is going to be hotter than ever!
When you book A SmokeLong Summer -- The Works! you'll get absolutely all of what SmokeLong has to offer this summer. To learn more about A SmokeLong Summer 24, simply go HERE. Or if you're ready to book, you can also book it here on Submittable.
Also Available in the SmokeLong Shop:
During A SmokeLong Summer 24, we are hosting a virtual bookfair and interviewing publishers and authors all summer long. Join us June 3 through August 4 for great deals on flash collections, craft books, and more. You can also participate in our reading groups during the summer (with discounts on the featured collections).
When you sign up for just the Virtual Bookfair, you also have the opportunity of booking the webinar/workshops of A SmokeLong Summer 24 at a drastically reduced price.
Book A SmokeLong Summer Light and participate in one webinar/workshop of your choice, and more!
Register by May 31!
We can't wait to write with you this summer.
Christopher Allen
SmokeLong
Use this form to receive three senior editors' comments from the Submittable queue on ONE story under 1000 words. These comments are general but actionable feedback regarding what's working and what's not. If you are looking for more specific feedback, please see below. If you do not want feedback, we offer a free submissions option and always will.
Use this form also to receive actionable feedback on a story that has been rejected by SmokeLong, especially if you received a second-tier rejection indicating that the story sparked a discussion among our editors. Please indicate RESUBMISSION in the title.
For more detailed feedback from one editor, please use the Senior Editor Critique form. We also offer a variety of workshops and webinars including SmokeLong Fitness, the year-round community workshop of SmokeLong. If you would like to be on our workshop mailing list, please send an email to editor@smokelong.com.
To help us give relevant and targeted feedback, please let us know whether the story is fiction, creative non-fiction, or hybrid. Please put this information directly in the story document.
Please be aware that we are editors/writers competent to give feedback on literary flash fiction (narratives under 1000 words). We may not be the right sounding board for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, romance, children's lit, etc.
Although you should use this form with the understanding that your story will in all likelihood not be accepted by the journal, if we decide to accept your submission (obviating the need for feedback), your fee will be reimbursed.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, you will receive a response through Submittable marked COMPLETED, and the editors' comments will be included in the response. We try to respond with feedback within 7 days, and we would appreciate a brief note letting us know you received our message and feedback.
As a thank-you for using this service, we are offering a $7 discount coupon to be used on anything in the SmokeLong shop anytime before December 31, 2024. To receive this discount, please use the coupon code THANKS. Please be aware that this discount is not available on events already discounted.
Christopher Allen
Publisher, SmokeLong Quarterly
SmokeLong Quarterly Senior Editors
Shasta Grant is the author of the chapbook Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home (Split Lip Press, 2017). She won the 2015 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest and the 2016 SmokeLong Quarterly Kathy Fish Fellowship. She has received residencies from Hedgebrook and The Kerouac Project and was selected as a 2020 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow. Her work has appeared in cream city review, Epiphany, Hobart, wigleaf, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and divides her time between Singapore and Indianapolis.
Sherrie Flick is the author of the novel Reconsidering Happiness and two short story collections, Whiskey, Etc. and Thank Your Lucky Stars. Her stories have been performed for Selected Shorts and appear in Ploughshares, New World Writing, and wigleaf, as well as the anthologies Flash Fiction Forward, New Sudden Fiction,and New Micro. She served as series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018 with guest editor Aimee Bender and is co-editor for Flash Fiction America, forthcoming from Norton in 2022.
Helen Rye lives in Norwich, UK. She has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Reflex Fiction contest and third place in the Bristol Short Story Prize. Her stories appear in The Best Small Fictions 2020 and have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, nominated for The Pushcart Prize and published in many journals and anthologies. She has an MA in Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia, where she was the 2019/20 Annabel Abbs Scholar.
Jasmine Sawers is a Kundiman fellow and Indiana University MFA alum. Their work has won awards from Ploughshares, NANO Fiction, Fractured Lit, and Press 53, and has appeared in such journals and anthologies as Norton’s Flash Fiction America, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf. Their book, The Anchored World, was a finalist for the 2023 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Originally from Buffalo, Sawers now lives outside St. Louis.
Jan Elman Stout’s fiction has appeared in Pure Slush, Literary Orphans, Jellyfish Review, Midwestern Gothic, Pidgeonholes, 100 Word Story and elsewhere. Her flash was nominated for the Best Small Fictions anthology in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Jan’s flash appears in the Best Microfiction2020 anthology. Jan is currently working on a story collection. She can be reached on Twitter @janelmanstout.
General Guidelines:
SmokeLong publishes flash narratives up to 1000 words. This word limit is firm. We do not consider poetry. On our blog we publish essays on craft and teaching flash. Please see the appropriate Submittable form.
Please send ONE previously unpublished story at a time and wait until you hear from us to send another.
Include a print-ready, third-person bio with your cover letter.
Our editors read blind, so please do not include your name or other identifying information anywhere on the story document, in the filename, or in the Submittable title. Your name and bio should appear in the cover letter on Submittable, which is hidden in our blind editing process.
We pay $100/story, upon publication in the quarterly issue. Payment will be issued via PayPal, and the writer may be responsible for any associated fees if applicable.
Online Rights: If we publish your work, we require exclusive electronic rights to it for 3 months and non-exclusive rights indefinitely so we can include it in our online archives.
Print Rights: We require non-exclusive print rights, for potential annual anthologies and promotional materials. All other rights remain yours.
You Might Want to Know Before Submitting:
As with any literary journal, the best way to figure out what we're looking for is to read the journal. We have thousands of stories archived on our site. Why not spend a couple of hours browsing the quarterly archives? The SLQ aesthetic remains an ever-changing, ever-elusive set of principles, but it most likely has to do with these kinds of things:
* language that surprises and excites,
* narratives that strive toward something other than a final punch line or twist,
* pieces that add up to something, often (but not necessarily always) meaning or emotional resonance,
* honest work that feels as if it has far more purpose than a writer wanting to write a story.
We publish spring, summer, fall and winter quarterly issues, featuring each story with an interview in the subsequent weeks. We invite an editor/teacher from the flash fiction community to join our team each quarter as a senior editor and workshop leader.
Our intent is to respond as quickly as possible. Please allow us up to four weeks to inform you if we have accepted your work for publication. Rejection will sadly come much more swiftly. (Note: Our emails sometimes get caught by spam filters, so please add "smokelong.com" to your allow list. We also can't respond to any third-party spam filter programs, so please don't submit to us with an email address that has that kind of security set up.)
We gladly consider simultaneous submissions, but please consider where you'd like your work to appear before you send it to 10 journals. We usually respond within 7 days. Please inform us immediately if your work has been accepted elsewhere for publication.
We look forward to your words. Before you hit SEND, please make sure your name is removed from the story and that your word count is 1000 or fewer.
Christopher Allen
Please use this form to receive a thorough critique from one of SmokeLong Quarterly's senior editors on one story under 1000 words. Our actionable feedback will include line editing as well as a general statement concerning larger issues such as voice, point of view, tone, and characterization. This price does not include a back-and-forth with the editor. We do offer workshops in which we offer detailed feedback and lots of interaction with the workshop leaders. If you are interested in taking part in a workshop, please let us know by sending an email to editors@smokelong.com.
But maybe you don't have time for a workshop these days. Maybe all you really need at the moment is feedback on one story. Then this is the service for you.
To help us give relevant and targeted feedback, please let us know whether the story is fiction, creative non-fiction, or hybrid.
Please be aware that we are editors/writers competent to give actionable feedback on literary flash fiction. We may not be the right sounding board for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, romance, children's lit, etc.
Although you should use this form with the understanding that your story will in all likelihood not be accepted by the journal, if we decide to accept your submission (obviating the need for feedback), your fee will be reimbursed.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, you will receive a response through Submittable marked as COMPLETED, and the editor's feedback will be attached to the message. We try to respond with feedback within 7 days.
As a thank-you for using this service, we are offering a $7 discount coupon to be used on anything in the SmokeLong shop anytime before December 31, 2024. To receive this discount, please use the coupon code THANKS. Please be aware that this discount is not available on events already discounted.
Christopher Allen
Editor, SmokeLong Quarterly
SmokeLong Quarterly Senior Editors
Christopher Allen is the author of the flash fiction collection Other Household Toxins (Matter Press, 2018). His work has most recently appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2019, Booth, and Gone Lawn. He has a BA in music business from Belmont University and an MA in English from Middle Tennessee State University. In normal times, Allen is a nomad, but in these unusual times he makes do at his home in Munich, Germany.
Shasta Grant is the author of the chapbook Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home (Split Lip Press, 2017). She won the 2015 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest and the 2016 SmokeLong Quarterly Kathy Fish Fellowship. She has received residencies from Hedgebrook and The Kerouac Project and was selected as a 2020 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow. Her work has appeared in cream city review, Epiphany, Hobart, wigleaf, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and divides her time between Singapore and Indianapolis.
Sherrie Flick is the author of the novel Reconsidering Happiness and two short story collections, Whiskey, Etc. and Thank Your Lucky Stars. Her stories have been performed for Selected Shorts and appear in Ploughshares, New World Writing, and wigleaf, as well as the anthologies Flash Fiction Forward, New Sudden Fiction,and New Micro. She served as series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018 with guest editor Aimee Bender and is co-editor for Flash Fiction America, forthcoming from Norton in 2022.
Jan Elman Stout’s fiction has appeared in Pure Slush, Literary Orphans, Jellyfish Review, Midwestern Gothic, Pidgeonholes, 100 Word Story and elsewhere. Her flash was nominated for the Best Small Fictions anthology in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Jan’s flash appears in the Best Microfiction 2020 anthology. Jan is currently working on a story collection. She can be reached on Twitter @janelmanstout.
Helen Rye lives in Norwich, UK. She has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Reflex Fiction contest and third place in the Bristol Short Story Prize. Her stories appear in The Best Small Fictions 2020 and have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, nominated for The Pushcart Prize and published in many journals and anthologies. She has an MA in Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia, where she was the 2019/20 Annabel Abbs Scholar.
Jasmine Sawers is a Kundiman fellow and Indiana University MFA alum. Their work has won awards from Ploughshares, NANO Fiction, Fractured Lit, and Press 53, and has appeared in such journals and anthologies as Norton’s Flash Fiction America, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf. Their book, The Anchored World, was a finalist for the 2023 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Originally from Buffalo, Sawers now lives outside St. Louis.
Have you participated in a SmokeLong workshop or attended a SmokeLong webinar between November 1, 2023 and November 1, 2024? Have you subsequently published a narrative--or even more--born in one of these workshops/webinars? Then we'd love to hear from you. You might just win some money.
Guidelines:
- Your narrative or narratives–fiction, nonfiction or anywhere in between–must have begun in a SmokeLong workshop (from 2019 to the present) and be published by November 1, 2024. You’ll be required to indicate the workshop, the workshop leader, and the writing task when you submit. Please also let us know where the piece was published.
- Your narrative must of course be 1000 words or fewer.
- You must be 18 years of age or older.
- You may enter all narratives that qualify, but you must enter each separately as an acceptable file on Submittable. Please do NOT send us links to publications.
- Due to the nature of this competition, we won’t be able to assure that entries are blind. Your work might have already won a prize, for example. With this in mind, however, we do ask that you remove your name from the story document itself. We will transfer the top 50 entries to our guest judge (TBA).
- Staff members and fellows of SmokeLong are not eligible.
- Deadline: November 10, 2024.
The Prizes:
First Prize: $500
Second Place: $100
Third Place: $50
Entry Fee:
There is no entry fee for this competition. This one's on us.
SmokeLong publishes essays on the subject of flash fiction on our blog. Essays will be considered for the Flash in the Classroom, Why Flash Fiction? and Flash, Back series, but we also consider craft essays and flash fiction collection Reviews.
The Why Flash Fiction? series explores what draws flash fiction writers and editors to the form. Send us your essays about the first time you wrote a piece of flash, why flash resonates with you, your favorite piece by another writer, your experience writing a particular published flash piece, or any other topic that broadly answers the question "Why do you write flash?" We normally do not publish essays that exceed 2000 words. Read our past essays on flash (which can be found on the blog!) to get a better idea of what we’re looking for.
Our Flash, Back series asks writers to discuss flash fiction that may be obscure or printed before the term “flash fiction” became popular, and tell us how these older or not-widely-known works are meaningful.
The Flash in the Classroom series invites creative writing instructors to discuss how they use flash fiction in their classrooms with the aim of inspiring other creative writing instructors around the world. We pay $25 for accepted Flash in the Classroom essays.
Please submit a completed draft for consideration.
Book Reviews
SmokeLong is interested in reviewing flash fiction collections from emerging writers, famous authors, independent presses, big publishing houses, and everything in between. Authors and publicists are welcome to submit queries and/or books for consideration through our Submittable portal. If you are a reviewer, please submit a completed review or query letter detailing your interests and qualifications as a flash fiction reviewer. Please note that we are a flash journal and that the reviews and interviews we publish should also be 1000 words or fewer.
Please note there is no monetary payment at this time for blog content unless otherwise stated above.
Il faut savoir :
SmokeLong publie des micronouvelles allant jusqu’à 1000 mots. Pour le projet du Global Flash les textes sont limités à 600 mots. Nous n’acceptons ni la poésie ni la non-fiction. Le but de cette série est de présenter des écrivain(e)s francophones qui sont publié(e)s en français et dont les écrits ne seraient pas autrement accessibles aux lecteurs anglophones.
SVP envoyez UNE micronouvelle inédite et attendez notre réponse avant de nous envoyer la prochaine.
Avec votre lettre d’accompagnement, incluez une brève biographie (rédigée à la 3ème personne et prête à être publier).
Quand nous avons des rédacteurs invitées, ils évaluent les textes à l’aveugle. Alors veuillez donc ne pas inclure votre nom ni d’autres informations vous identifiants dans le texte lui-même.
Nous ne sommes pas en mesure de rémunérer les auteurs, mais nous sommes éternellement dévoués à tous les écrivains que nous publions.
Droits d’auteur en ligne: Si nous publions votre nouvelle, nous exigeons des droits exclusifs électroniques pendant 3 mois et des droits non-exclusifs pour une durée illimitée pour que nous puissions inclure le texte dans nos archives en ligne.
Droits d’auteur relatif au format imprimé: Nous exigeons des doits non-exclusifs relatifs au format imprimé pour d’éventuels anthologies ou du matériel promotionnel. Tous les autres droits restent à l’auteur.
SmokeLong Quarterly veröffentlicht Kurzgeschichten bis zu 1000 Wörter. Für den Global Flash Feature haben wir dies auf 600 Wörter beschränkt. Bitte senden Sie uns EINE noch nicht veröffentlichte Geschichte und warten Sie auf unsere Rückmeldung.
Eine kurze Beschreibung über sich selbst könnten Sie zum Deckbrief beifügen, bitte aber KEINE persönliche Informationen im Story Dokument einfügen, da die Auswahl der Geschichte vom Gastleser anonym erfolgt.
Elektronische Rechte:
Falls wir Ihre Arbeit veröffentlichen, fordern wir exklusive elektronische Rechte für drei Monate und weiterhin das unbefristete nicht-exklusive Recht die Geschichte in unseres Archiv aufzunehmen.
Druckrecht:
Wir fordern nicht-exklusive Rechte für potentielle jährliche Sammlungen und Werbematerial. Alle weitere Rechte bleiben Ihnen vorbehalten.