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SmokeLong Quarterly

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Letter from the Editor (32)

Story by Tara Laskowski June 27, 2011

Art by Marty D. Ison

Welcome to summer. It might be hot as hell outside, but in this issue we’ve got anything from blizzards—check out “A Morning Routine” by Weike Wang—to icy ocean waves in Heather Peterson’s “Last Sight of Land,” to help cool you off. Don’t worry, though—you can go back to summer camp and high school and awkward adolescence with stories like “Bible Camp” by Wyatt Bonikowski and “Belly of a Fish” by Rachel Mangini.

This issue sees the return of 11 SmokeLong Weekly stories, only this time with added interviews of the authors, and 9 brand-new stories by Trent England, Heather Peterson, Cynthia Larsen, Dave Newman, Brian Oliu, Dylan Mohr, Peter Stenson, Donna Laemmlen and Curtis Smith.

Some of my favorites in this issue are the tiniest of stories. Randall Brown gives us a delightfully wicked hint fiction with “Instead of the Glass.” Cynthia Larsen and Donna Laemmlen’s stories “On Becoming Women” and “Twining” read more like prose poems to me—the language and rhythm alone in these stories will leave you with shivers. And Curtis Smith paints a portrait of an entire man’s life in just a few paragraphs with his story “The Tycoon.”

All the stories in this issue are outstanding, and it is with great pride that we publish them.

I also want to give another shout-out to all the amazing artists who contributed work for this issue. Thank you to Gay Degani, Ashley Inguanta, Dave Reale, David Ohlerking, Shannon Reynolds and Justin Chen—our “artists-in-residence” if you will—for donating their time and talent to our publication. Look for profiles and interviews of these artists on our blog in the upcoming months.

Thanks, and have a fabulous summer! See you again in September.

Tara Laskowski
Senior Editor, SmokeLong Quarterly

June 27, 2011

About the Author

Tara Laskowski

Tara Laskowski has been editor at SmokeLong Quarterly since 2010. Her short story collection Bystanders was hailed by Jennifer Egan as “a bold, riveting mash-up of Hitchcockian suspense and campfire-tale chills.” She is also the author of Modern Manners For Your Inner Demons, tales of dark etiquette. Her fiction has been published in the Norton anthology Flash Fiction International, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Mid-American Review, and numerous other journals, magazines, and anthologies. Tara lives and works in a suburb of Washington, D.C.

About the Artist

A native of Ohio, Marty D. Ison lives with his wife transplanted in the sands of the Gulf of Mexico. He studied fine arts at Saint Petersburg College. In addition to the visual arts, he writes poetry, short stories, and novels. See more of Ison’s work here.

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