SmokeLong Quarterly was established in 2003 by Dave Clapper. Past editors-in-chief have been Randall Brown, Tara Laskowski and Beth Thomas. The current editor-in-chief and publisher/owner is Christopher Allen. Allen joined the SmokeLong staff in 2014 as managing editor, became co-editor of the journal in 2018 and the owner of the journal in 2022 when he created SmokeLong Fitness, the community workshop of SmokeLong.
All other editors are associate, freelance editors or volunteers. Our senior editors—and many of our submissions editors—offer editing services privately. We encourage you to seek them out HERE.
We are dedicated to bringing the best flash narratives to the web quarterly, whether written by widely published authors or those new to the craft. We are also dedicated to serving the literary community.
The term “smoke-long” comes anecdotally from the Chinese, who noted that reading a piece of flash takes about the same length of time as smoking a cigarette. SmokeLong Quarterly does not encourage smoking.
- We publish flash narratives that are 1000 words or fewer, excluding the title. Our word limit is firm.
- General submissions are open 365 days a year, except during some competitions.
- We always have a free submission period each quarter. We consider multiple submissions for a small fee. Simultaneous submissions are always fine, but please take into consideration that we respond quickly.
- Please consider donating through the tip-jar feature or through the donation button on the website. While we appreciate your generosity tremendously, your donation will not affect our decision on your story. This would be wrong. Through Submittable we offer paid feedback options, which we subsidize so that the editor makes more than you pay.
- SmokeLong stories have been recognized by the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Web, Best of the Net, The Best Small Fictions and the wigleaf Top50. They have also been anthologized in places such as W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction America, Flash Fiction International and Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader: Flush Fiction.
- We offer a variety of mentorships, workshops, and webinars including SmokeLong Fitness, the year-round community workshop of SmokeLong. If you would like to be on our mailing list to receive workshop information, please send an email to editor@smokelong.com.
- Occasionally, we invite creative writing classes to read our submissions queue for one week.
- We support worthy causes when we see them. Please have a look at our We Support page. These organizations do good things. When you donate to SmokeLong, you’re indirectly donating to these causes. We encourage you to donate directly to them as well.
- We run or have run the following competitions: The SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction (The Smokey), The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest (The Mikey), The SmokeLong Quarterly Prize for Comedy, and The SmokeLong Workshop Prize.
