In 2024 SmokeLong hosted our second SmokeLong Workshop Prize competition. Our workshop participants reported almost 300 publications to us before November 1, 2024. In 2025, we’ll be featuring one writer each week from The SmokeLong Workshop Prize long list. It’s an excellent series of interviews, each grappling with questions about workshopping, giving and receiving feedback, and the publication process. If you are a previous or current SmokeLong workshop participant and you have ultimately published something you began in a SmokeLong workshop, remember to enter The SmokeLong Workshop Prize competition. This free-to-enter competition is on our Submittable page.
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An Interview with Ann Yuan — “Namo Amituofo” published in Five on the Fifth and “How to Write a Story on Skin” published in MoonPark Review
What do you remember about the workshop where you wrote these stories? What was the prompt or writing task that led to each story?
“Namo Amituofu” was drafted in SmokeLong Summer 2023 for Writing Task 10—When In Rome, a prompt posted by Jasmine Sawers.
“How to Write a Story on Skin” was drafted in SmokeLong Summer 2023 for Writing Task 1—We Are All WIPs. If I remember it correctly, the idea of the story came from the tasks in May 2023, the format of hermit crab.
Peer-review feedback is always full of surprises. In general, what kind of feedback do you find helpful? What kind of feedback do you find less helpful?
I was grateful to receive much detailed feedback, which not only helped me find the loopholes in characters and plots but they also picked up language problems, which usually is a big problem for me.
To how many places did you send these stories? Can you tell us a little about their journey to publication?
“Namo Amituofo”: I sent this story to 32 journals, 19 rejections, 11 withdrawals, 1 acceptance, and 1 willing to accept but it’s already unavailable. As the rejections piled up, I started losing faith and had all kinds of doubts about myself. I changed the title, added one section, and kept editing the ending because in one rejection the editor said she had problem with the ending. I don’t remember how many times I edited the ending. Despite many wording changes, the idea of the ending remained the same. I just thought this should be the way to wrap up the story.
“How to Write a Story on Skin”: I sent this story to 31 journals, 18 rejections, 12 withdrawals, 1 acceptance. Based on the feedback I received in my workshop group, I edited the first section and weighed in on the mother-son relationship.
What is your advice to someone considering taking part in a peer-review workshop?
In the peer-review world, helping others is helping yourself. In many cases, the mistakes you find in other’s writing are the same mistakes you make in your own writing. You just don’t realize it.
Read “Namo Amituofo” by Ann Yuan in Five on the Fifth.
Read “How to Write a Story on Skin” by Ann Yuan in MoonPark Review.
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Ann Yuan’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine, Gone Lawn, MoonPark Review, BULL, Hawaii Pacific Review, and elsewhere. She has been included in the Overheard Anthology. She lives on Long Island, NY.
