Welcome to summer. It might be hot as hell outside, but in this issue we’ve got anything from blizzards—check out “A Morning Routine” by Weike Wang—to icy ocean waves in Heather Peterson’s “Last Sight of Land,” to help cool you off. Don’t worry, though—you can go back to summer camp and high school and awkward adolescence with stories like “Bible Camp” by Wyatt Bonikowski and “Belly of a Fish” by Rachel Mangini.
This issue sees the return of 11 SmokeLong Weekly stories, only this time with added interviews of the authors, and 9 brand-new stories by Trent England, Heather Peterson, Cynthia Larsen, Dave Newman, Brian Oliu, Dylan Mohr, Peter Stenson, Donna Laemmlen and Curtis Smith.
Some of my favorites in this issue are the tiniest of stories. Randall Brown gives us a delightfully wicked hint fiction with “Instead of the Glass.” Cynthia Larsen and Donna Laemmlen’s stories “On Becoming Women” and “Twining” read more like prose poems to me—the language and rhythm alone in these stories will leave you with shivers. And Curtis Smith paints a portrait of an entire man’s life in just a few paragraphs with his story “The Tycoon.”
All the stories in this issue are outstanding, and it is with great pride that we publish them.
I also want to give another shout-out to all the amazing artists who contributed work for this issue. Thank you to Gay Degani, Ashley Inguanta, Dave Reale, David Ohlerking, Shannon Reynolds and Justin Chen—our “artists-in-residence” if you will—for donating their time and talent to our publication. Look for profiles and interviews of these artists on our blog in the upcoming months.
Thanks, and have a fabulous summer! See you again in September.
Tara Laskowski
Senior Editor, SmokeLong Quarterly
June 27, 2011
A SmokeLong Summer 24!