SmokeLong Quarterly

SmokeLong Quarterly is excited to nominate six fantastic stories for the 2017 Pushcart Prize!

Over the next three Tuesdays, we will announce our nominees by posting links to the selected stories and author interviews.

Today we are happy to announce that we have nominated Steve Edwards “Sometimes My Father Comes Back From the Dead” and “The Sound and The Song” by Letitia Trent!

 

 Sometimes My Father Comes Back From the Dead

“Sometimes My Father Comes Back from the Dead” draws the reader in so effortlessly. Magic realism is not easy. It can often seem heavy-handed or forced, but Steve Edwards pulls it off with a solid, engaging voice that urges the reader along to a sort of coda in the brief line “Love is a mess.” This is a brilliant example of flash fiction.  – Christopher Allen, Managing Editor

Read “Sometimes My Father Comes Back From the Dead”

Smoke and Mirrors: An Interview with Steve Edwards

 

The Sound and The Song

The Apocalypse is coming. Our world in crisis has inspired an onslaught of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it stories. “The Sound and the Song” is one of these. Letitia Trent deftly uses cadence to create a confused and dazed tone as her characters, an archetypal nuclear family, succumb to the effects of a gas attack. Trent manages to make this apocalypse personal and even beautiful.  – Christopher Allen

Read “The Sound and The Song”

Smoke and Mirrors: An Interview with Letitia Trent

 

Check back with us next Tuesday for our final round of our 2017 Pushcart Prize Nomination Announcement!