For over a decade SmokeLong has supported emerging writers, first through The Kathy Fish Fellowship, later renamed The SmokeLong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellowship. As we have grown, we’ve decided to offer a program that will help not only one emerging writer per year but four.
SmokeLong Emerging Writer Fellows join our staff of submissions editors for six months to read the SmokeLong queue. They receive feedback from our senior editors on two drafts each month, and they participate in SmokeLong Fitness, the community peer-review workshop of SmokeLong.
Choosing this year’s fellows was no easy task. We received so many worthy applications. Each of the applicants on our short list was strong; each would have made an excellent fellow. We wish all 11 finalists much success.
Finalists:
Busayo Akinmoju
Tina Ehsanipour
Esther Fox
Jaime Gill
Ella Hormel
Sandra Khalil
M.E. Macuaga
Mollie McLean
Kleopatra Olympiou
Elizabeth Rosen
Nora Esme Wagner
The 2025 SmokeLong Emerging Writer Fellows
Ani King (they/them) is a queer, gender non-compliant writer, artist, and activist from Michigan. Ani is the first place winner of the 2024 Blue Frog Annual Flash Fiction Contest, a SmokeLong Grand Micro Competition 2023 Finalist, and has had work featured in Split Lip Magazine. Find their work at aniking.net.
Belinda Rowe is a short fiction writer and English Literature teacher. Born in New Zealand she now lives in Walyalup (Fremantle) Western Australia with her husband and three children. A lot of her story ideas come to her while walking her dog, Cormac. She has words published by Night Parrot Press, Flash Frontier, Gone Lawn and X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine. She placed first in the WA Love to Read Local Competition, and is nominated for Best Small Fictions.
Kyle Weik is a queer Japanese-American writer based in Los Angeles. His work appears or is forthcoming in Vestal Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. You can find him on X at @kyleisamu.
Katherine Plumhoff is an American writer who grew up around the Great Lakes and now lives near the sea in Spain. She studied creative writing at the University of Michigan. Her short fiction appears in literary magazines including X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, The Forge, Flash Frog, Gone Lawn, and Heavy Feather Review. Her essays have been published in Off Assignment and Litro. She was a 2021 Foundation House fellow in creative nonfiction. In 2024, she was included in the anthology Best Small Fictions, nominated for Best of the Net, and twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is a founding member and associate director of the European Writers Salon, which connects writers across Europe at in-person and online events. Say hi at @kplumhoff or katherineplumhoff.com.
