SmokeLong Quarterly

SmokeLong Quarterly is a literary magazine accepting flash fiction. The term "smoke-long" comes from the Chinese, who noted that reading a piece of flash takes about as long as smoking a cigarette. So that’s the length of works we are looking for—about a smoke long.

We are looking for flash fiction only, and we can’t wait to read your stuff. You want to be published? We seek creativity and surprises, fresh themes and unique style. Humor, cleverness, beauty, and unique word usage are all appreciated. Dark is good, too. And erotica—twice a week is good for us. And if the 1,000 word limit makes you think that we prefer pieces closest to that length, think again—imagine if you will for a moment the way your eyes lit up as a child on Christmas morning—that's how we react when we open up a submission of about 200 words.

Quite honestly, we are passionate about words and we’re guessing that if you are reading this, you share our passion. We know how hard it is to get published (especially the first time), so we want to do our part in getting your best stuff out there. We are driven to share excellent flash writing with the world, and to finding previously unpublished authors. We hope that previously unpublished authors will feel confident about submitting. We'll strive to publish as many excellent pieces as we can, regardless of the author's previous success.

We started this mag thinking we'd be charging reading fees, which in turn would become the stipend for our best three pieces each issue. But we hate the idea of charging writers, and so we set out to find sponsors to provide the paychecks for your work. Please take a look over to the left and if you are in need of the services listed there, we encourage you to purchase them through our site. Your support, and that of all your friends, relatives, and even the people you don't like very much just may wind up back in your pocket. If you know of a company who would like to sponsor our site, please email the publisher at publisher@smokelong.com.

We publish on a quarterly schedule.

We accept submissions any day of the year. Current submissions will be considered for our March 15, 2005 issue.

(last updated December 2, 2004)