SmokeLong Quarterly

This workshop is now sold out. If you would like to be on our waiting list (in case we have cancelations), please send an email to editors@smokelong.com and we will respond as promptly as possible. 

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We are excited to have Dustin M. Hoffman as our guest editor for issue 74! As our quarterly guest editor, Dustin will also be teaching a module in our fall workshop alongside Shasta Grant and Christopher Allen. Check out the workshop details below and feel free to send us questions via email or direct message on Twitter (@smokelong). We are looking forward to writing with you!

Workshop Description:

Module One: “Inside Beginnings” with Shasta Grant

We all know that the beginning of your story needs to grab readers’ (and editors’) attention. But what does that actually look like on the page? We will examine various ways—going beyond “start in the middle”—to start a story that will immediately engage your readers and keep them reading.

Module Two: “Flash Scavenging” with Dustin M. Hoffman
Creating art out of nothing can be intimidating. So let’s experiment with preexisting language and subjects and forms. This workshop will inspire you to scavenge, recycle, and borrow to write alchemical flash fiction.

Module Three: “The Sound of Flash” with Christopher Allen
What sets flash apart from other narrative forms? We’ll look at form in flash and take a deep dive into the various narrative devices that effect urgency–the unique sound of flash.

What you need to know:

The SmokeLong Workshops Online are asynchronous, so you can participate from anywhere in the world. Each module is two weeks long with all of the writing tasks in the first week. The second week is designed to give participants time to write, read, critique, and breathe. On Tuesday and Friday of the second week, participants have the opportunity to send the workshop leader a draft for feedback. Also, at the end of the seventh week, participants have the opportunity to send each workshop leader one last draft–for a total of seven-to-nine drafts (depending on how you submit the last week) during the seven-week workshop.

The workshop participants will peer review in small groups of five, and these groups will be remixed for each module. The workshop leaders are not present in the small groups.

Large group discussion of writing tasks and prompts happens in the comments section of the writing tasks. The workshop leader is active in the large group. Please take advantage of this opportunity to interact. We encourage lively, positive discussion.

The workshop happens on a devoted website. Everything runs very much like many other social media sites. You’ll need to know how to upload files and post comments. There are tutorials to help navigate the site, and we will help.

Please reach out if you have questions that are not answered here.

To book this course, as mentioned above, please respond to this email and we will respond promptly with payment details.

Workshop Details:

Dates: September 27 – November 14

Cost: $398 (Send us an email at editors@smokelong.com for payment details.)

Participants: Limited to 20

Workshop Leaders: Shasta Grant, Dustin M. Hoffman, Christopher Allen

No time for a seven-week workshop? We offer other feedback options.

Workshop Leaders’ Bios:

Shasta Grant is the author of the chapbook Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home (Split Lip Press, 2017). She won the 2015 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest and the 2016 SmokeLong Quarterly Kathy Fish Fellowship. She has received residencies from Hedgebrook and The Kerouac Project and was selected as a 2020 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow. Her work has appeared in cream city review, Epiphany, Hobart, wigleaf, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and divides her time between Singapore and Indianapolis.

Dustin M. Hoffman writes stories about working people. He’s the author of the story collection No Good for Digging and the fiction chapbook Secrets of the Wild (Word West Press). His first book One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist (University of Nebraska Press) won the 2015 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. He spent ten years painting houses in Michigan before getting his MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University and his PhD in creative writing from Western Michigan University. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Puerto del Sol, Masters Review, Witness, Quarterly West, The Journal, wigleaf, The Adroit Journal, Faultline, and a bunch of other neat places. He lives in South Carolina and teaches creative writing and literature at Winthrop University.

Christopher Allen is the author of the flash fiction collection Other Household Toxins (Matter Press, 2018). His work has most recently appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2019, New World Writing, Booth, and Gone Lawn. Allen, a teacher and editor for more than 20 years, is a nomad. Allen has been a regular workshop leader for the UK flash fiction festival, as well as a judge for The Bath Flash Fiction Award, Micro Madness, The Cambridge Flash Fiction Award and others. He is the editor-in-chief and publisher of SmokeLong Quarterly.