SmokeLong Quarterly

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 Shira Musicant — “Opportunistic Feeders” published by Vestal Review

What do you remember about the workshop where you wrote this story? What was the prompt or writing task that led to the story?

“Opportunistic Feeders” was written the second week of January 2024. The writing task was one I love: to observe something closely, something that we see each day, and defamiliarize the familiar. Secondarily, to craft a beginning so that the opening line or section reveals setting in a surprising way.

A great blue heron often visits a field near my house. I did see it catch a gopher one day and watched the long process of swallowing—inspiration for things that are difficult to swallow.

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 loved the feedback from my January Endurance group for this story. Their various understandings and interpretations helped me refine the “aboutness” of the story—what did I want a reader to be left with?

This is generally true for me with any feedback: I like hearing how a reader understands the story and if there are details that are unnecessary, or details that are missing. I can then ascertain if this is the story—or some version of it—that I am trying to tell.

It is also useful to hear from readers where engagement drops off for them, opening for me questions of rewriting a scene or cutting it. Often, readers quote their favorite lines and whether I use those in the final draft, or not, it is always helpful to hear where the writing shines.

Less helpful for me is feedback that is generic, that could be applied to any story. Though I always appreciate someone reading my words.

To how many places did you send this story? Can you tell us a little about its journey to publication?

I sent this story to one other Journal: Milk Candy Review. After Cathy Ulrich rejected it in February with a very kind note, appreciating the writing, I went back to the story, revising it and giving it a bit more time to marinate. I resubmitted to Vestal Review in April. So, its journey was short (unlike many others), as Vestal Review accepted it in March. It is a reminder, this journey of “Opportunistic Feeders,” after a rejection, to return to a story I believe in, to give it some time, to edit, and to send it out again.

What is your advice to someone considering taking part in a peer-review workshop?

I highly recommend it. Not only to have your own stories reviewed, but to look at those others write, and to read the feedback others give those stories. It is so gratifying to read an early draft of someone’s work, offer feedback, and then to see that draft revised. How the author has worked with the feedback. And then to see it published! Having an inside look at that process is like a lesson in craft.

Read “Opportunistic Feeders” by Shira Musicant in Vestal Review.

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Shira Musicant lives in the foothills of Santa Barbara. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her current and forthcoming stories can be found in Vestal Review, Santa Barbara Literary Journal, Lucent Dreaming, Blue Earth Review, Fourth Genre and Does It Have Pockets. Find her @shiramusicant.bsky.social.