SmokeLong Quarterly

The SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction (The Smokey) is now an annual competition that celebrates and compensates excellence in flash. Our first grand prize winner in 2018 was “Whale Fall” by Alvin Park. In 2020 Abby Feden won the top prize with “To Pieces”. Both stories appeared in Best Small Fictions in their respective years. In 2022 Marcus Tan won for his story “Emergency Contact”. In addition. Jasmine Sawers’ piece “All Your Fragile History,” a finalist for Best of the Net in 2020, was included in the Norton anthology Flash Fiction America; and Leonora Desar’s third-place story “*69” was included in Best Small Fictions. The 2024 winner of The Smokey was “Grocery Store Mama” by Shayla Frandsen. Please take a few minutes and read the competition issues.

The grand prize winner of The Smokey is automatically nominated for Best Small Fictions, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best of the Net, and any other prize we deem appropriate. In addition to all this love, we will pay the grand prize winner $2500. Second place: $1000. Third place $500. Finalists: $150. All finalists and placers will be published in the special competition issue in June 2025.

Guidelines:

– Enter starting February 1!
– Open to anyone on the planet aged 18+.
– Your entry must be previously unpublished.
– You may write in English or in any other language as long as an English translation accompanies your entry. Our decision will be based on the English translation. Winnings, if any, will be split evenly between the translator and writer. Both the English and the original non-Anglo versions of the story must be previously unpublished and both entered into the competition.
– Your entry must be 1000 words or fewer, excluding the title. There is no minimum word count requirement, but keep in mind that we also have an annual competition focused on micros 250 words and fewer later in the year.
– You may enter as many times as you like, but an entry fee must accompany each entry. If you are submitting multiple entries at the same time, they must all be in the same document.
– Your name must NOT appear on the entry itself. This includes the filename, headers and footers. Your name and contact information should appear ONLY in the cover letter, which is not visible to our judges.
– SmokeLong Quarterly staff, including our emerging writer fellows, are not eligible to enter this competition.
– Please double space your work and use a legible, dark font.
– Deadline: May 10, 2025 (midnight ET)

Judging

SmokeLong’s annual competitions are judged by the SmokeLong editors. We do not employ a guest judge. Our process is similar to our general submissions workflow. We send rejections as soon as we can so that your work is not tied up for the entire entry submissions period. This means you will receive a response within about a week if we have decided to decline the entry. If we are taking longer than one week, this is a great sign.

The Prizes

Grand Prize: $2500
Second Prize: $1000
Third Prize: $500
Finalists: $150

All finalists and placers will be published in the June 2025 issue of SmokeLong Quarterly.

Competition Fees

February 1 – March 31

One entry: $14
Up to two entries: $21
Up to four entries: $36

April 1 – May 15

One entry: $16
Up to two entries: $24
Up to four entries: $39

If you are unable to pay an entry fee, you can email us at editor@smokelong.com for one free entry. This offer is valid until March 31, 2025.