SmokeLong Quarterly

Masthead

• Publisher/Owner and Editor-in-Chief

  Christopher Allen

  Christopher Allen is the author of the flash fiction collection Other Household Toxins (Matter Press, 2018). His work has appeared in Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), The Best Small Fictions (twice), and widely in literary journals and anthologies. Allen has judged The Bath Flash Fiction Award, Micro Madness, the Cambridge Flash Fiction Award, and the Bridport Prize. He is the co-creator of the acclaimed community workshop of SmokeLong, SmokeLong Fitness. Allen, a nomad, has been the owner of SmokeLong since 2022.

  Email: editor@smokelong.com

• Senior Coordinating Editor

  Shasta Grant

  Shasta Grant  is the author of WHEN WE WERE FERAL (Regal House, 2026) and 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, wigleaf, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Indianapolis.

• Senior Editor for Workshops and Outreach

  Helen Rye

  Helen Rye lives in Norwich, UK. She has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Reflex Fiction contest and third place for the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Manchester Writing School QMD Prize. Her stories appear in The Best Small Fictions and various other journals and anthologies. She has an MA with Distinction in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia, where she was the 2019/20 Annabel Abbs Scholar. She is studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at UEA. Rye is the co-creator of SmokeLong Fitness, the year-round community workshop of SmokeLong.

• Senior Editors

  Sherrie Flick

  Sherrie Flick is the 2025 McGee Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at Davidson College. She received a 2023 Creative Development Grant from the Heinz Endowments and a Writing Pittsburgh fellowship from the Creative Nonfiction Foundation. She served as co-editor for the Norton anthology Flash Fiction America and series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018 (Braddock Avenue Books). Her third story collection, I Have Not Considered Consequences published in April 2025 with Autumn House Press. Her other works include, the essay collection Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist (University of Nebraska Press), Thank Your Lucky Stars: Short Stories (Autumn House), Whiskey, Etc.: Short (Short) Stories (Autumn House), and Reconsidering Happiness: A Novel (University of Nebraska Press). She lives in Pittsburgh.

• Senior Editors

  Jan Elman Stout

  Jan Elman Stout’s fiction has appeared in 100 Word Story, Shotgun Honey, Matter Press, Pithead Chapel, Ghost Parachute, Pure Slush and elsewhere. Her flash was nominated for the Best Small Fictions anthology for four years in a row and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. Her work appears in the Best Microfiction 2020 anthology. Jan is currently working on a short story + essay collection on women’s silencing throughout history.

• Senior Interviews Editor

  Michael Czyzniejewski

  Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of three collections of stories, Elephants in Our Bedroom (Dzanc Books, 2009), Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions (Curbside Splendor, 2012), and I Will Love You For the Rest of My Life: Breakup Stories (Curbside Splendor, 2015). He is an assistant professor at Missouri State University, where he edits Moon City Review and serves as both Literary and Managing Editor for Moon City Press. In 2010, he received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

• Senior Reviews Editor

  Erin Vachon

  Erin Vachon is Senior Reviews Editor at SmokeLong Quarterly and the Multigenre + Chapbook Editor for Split/Lip Press. They have served on the masthead at The Rumpus, Longleaf Review, and JMMW, as well as being an Editorial Panelist for Sarabande‘s 2025 and 2026 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Their work appears in SmokeLong Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Pinch, Brevity, The Anarchist Review of Books, and more. Their writing has been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Best of Net, and Best Microfiction. They are on the English Department Adjunct Faculty at Rhode Island College and live outside Providence, Rhode Island.

  Email: reviews@smokelong.com

• Senior Submissions Editor

  Melissa Llanes Brownlee

  Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in Quarterly West, Wigleaf, The Threepenny Review, Matchbook, Bluestem, Sunlight Press and Cutleaf Journal, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin (2022) and Kahi and Lua (2022) and look out for Bitter over Sweet (2025) from Santa Fe Writers Project. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.

• Submissions Editors

  Elisabeth Ingram Wallace

  Elisabeth Ingram Wallace is the winner of the Mogford Short Story Prize, Writing the Future, and a Scottish Book Trust ‘New Writers Award.’ Her work has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Atticus Review, Flash Frontier and other journals and anthologies including Best Microfiction 2019. A founding editor of ‘BIFFY’, the Best British and Irish Flash Fiction series, she is currently the Senior Editor for Flash Fiction at TSS Publishing. She has a Creative Writing M.Litt. with Distinction from the University of Glasgow, and was awarded a Dewar Arts Award for Fiction as one of ‘Scotland’s Brightest and Best’.

  On hiatus.

• Submissions Editors

  Daniel DiFranco 

  Daniel DiFranco is a writer/musician/teacher from Philadelphia. He is the author of two novels, Panic Years (Tailwinds Press, 2018) and Devil On My Trail (Unsolicited Press, 2024). His short stories can be found in Smokelong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, Fractured Lit, and others. Full list of pubs and miscellany can be found at danieldifranco.com.

• Submissions Editors

  Farhana Khalique

  Farhana Khalique is a writer, voiceover artist, teacher, and PhD student from south-west London, UK. Her writing has appeared in Flash Fiction Festival Six, Tales from the City, The Best Small Fictions, and more. Farhana has judged the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, been shortlisted for The Asian Writer Short Story Prize, and she is a former Word Factory Apprentice Award winner. She is also a submissions editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, and she has taught workshops with SmokeLong, Flash Fiction Festival UK, Dahlia Publishing, and more. You can find her online at @HanaKhalique and farhanakhalique.com .

• Submissions Editors

  A W Earl

  A W Earl is a non-binary writer, storyteller, and poet based in the Scottish Borders who works primarily in poetry and long-form prose. They studied Literature with Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and have been performing as a poet and storyteller since their mid-teens. Among other venues, their work has appeared in collections by Renard Press, Watkins Press, and Queer Words Scotland, and has been featured by the International Human Rights Arts Movement, and Full House Literary. Their debut novel Time’s Fool was published by Unbound in 2018 under the name Alys Earl.

• Submissions Editors

  Gillian O'Shaughnessy

  Gillian O’Shaughnessy is a reformed journalist who spent 25 years as a reporter and a broadcaster in news and local radio at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Her flash fiction has been widely anthologised, including in the international Best Small Fictions 23 – 25.  She has won the London Independent Story Prize, the Welkin Prize and the US Fractured Literary Anthology Prize, among others. Gillian has curated Writers Weekend for Perth Festival and judged the prestigious Stella Prize for Australian women and non-binary writers. Her book, Salt City Runaway, features 50 flash and micro fictions of working class girls in Western Australia and is published by Night Parrot Press. She lives and writes on unceded Noongar Boodja in Walyalup/Fremantle with her husband and wildly spoilt dog, Monty.

• Submissions Editors

  Patricia Quintana Bidar

  Patricia Q. Bidar is a western U.S. writer and Port of Los Angeles area native. She is the author of Pardon Me for Moonwalking (2025, Unsolicited Press) and Wild Plums (2024, ELJ Editions). Patricia’s work has appeared in journals including Painted Bride Quarterly, Another Chicago, Waxwing, The Pinch, Wigleaf, and SmokeLong Quarterly, and is included in Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton) and the Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction anthologies. She lives, writes, and reads in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit patriciaqbidar.com

• Submissions Editors

  Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar

  Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar is an Indian American writer. She is the author of Morsels of Purple and Skin Over Milk, and is currently working on her first novel. Her stories have been published in numerous anthologies and journals. She is the winner of National Flash Fiction Day Micro Contest and the runner-up for the Larry Brown Short Story Prize. Outside of her day job as a technologist, she is a submissions editor for SmokeLong Quarterly. More at https://saraspunyfingers.com, Twitter:@PunyFingers

• Submissions Editors

  Anna De Vaul

  Anna De Vaul writes both poetry and prose. Her first book, Volcano (Unsolicited Press 2019), is a collection-length sequence of poems published under the heteronym Elosham Vog. Her chapbook Cosmonaut was published by Valley Press (UK) in 2021. Anna is a winner of Eyewear Publishing’s Fortnight Prize and is a Pushcart Prize (fiction) and Forward Prize (best single poem) nominee. She is a founding editor of the literary journal Lighthouse (UK) and an editor for Nimrod International Journal.

  On hiatus.

• Submissions Editors

  Clarie Gor

  Clarie Gor is a Kenyan creative writer and journalist. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Equipoise, the 2020 anthology of the Nairobi Writing Academy, Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Audacity, Kalahari Review and others. Her flash creative nonfiction essay, ‘This Song My God, I Have Wept!’ won the February 2019 Igby Prize for nonfiction. All her work is archived on https://clariesramblings.com.

  Gor is the content curator for The Village, a community space for the global flash community by SmokeLong.

• Submissions Editors

  Hema Nataraju

  Hema Nataraju is a writer, mom, and polyglot based in Singapore. Her writing has been published in various online and print literary magazines including Best Small Fictions 2023, Wigleaf, Barrelhouse, Booth, and 100-word Story. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and the Best Small Fictions anthology 2025. She is the EIC of Literary Namjooning–an online literary magazine centered around self-care, and a submissions editor at SmokeLong Quarterly. @m_ixedbag across social media channels.

• Submissions Editors

  Janna Miller

  Librarian, mother, and minor trickster, Janna has published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Shenandoah, Fractured Lit, Best Microfiction, and others. Her story collection, All Lovers Burn at the End of the World was published by ELJ Editions in 2024. Generally, if the toaster blows up, it is not her fault.

• Submissions Editors

  Julia Strayer

  Julia Strayer’s stories are out in the world living their best lives, most recently with CRAFT Literary, trampset, Ghost Parachute, HAD, and others. Her stories have been selected for The Wigleaf Top 50 and Best Small Fictions. She teaches at New York University. https://juliastrayer.com

• Submissions Editors

  Abby Feden

  Abby Feden is a fiction writer living in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She is the winner of The 2020 SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, X-R-A-Y, Third Coast, Superstition Review, Best Small Fictions 2021, and elsewhere. Feden received her MFA in Fiction from Western Washington University and is pursuing her PhD in Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. Find her on Twitter @aefeden. 

  On hiatus.

• Submissions Editors

  Elissa Field

  Elissa Field is a Pushcart and Best American nominated writer, who was a previous Emerging Writer Fellow with SmokeLong. Her writing has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, Ghost Parachute, HAD, Citron Review, Reckon Review, Hypertext, Conjunctions, Adelaide, Writer Unboxed, and elsewhere. In addition to flash, she writes novels, which have earned a Doro Boehme grant from Story Studio Chicago, and been a Heekin Foundation finalist, First Pages longlist, and James Jones First Novel prize finalist. She lives with her sons in an historic house under an ancient mango tree, with a flash collection underway. Find her @elissafield or elissafieldthompson.com.

• Submissions Editors

  Dawn Miller

  Dawn Miller is a writer living in Picton, Ontario, Canada. Her work has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Fractured Lit, Vestal Review, among others. Awards include 2024 winner of the Toronto Star Short Story Contest, Forge Flash Fiction Competition, Fractured Lit Anthology Prize, Best Microfiction, and Bath Flash Fiction Award, Second Prize. A former SmokeLong Emerging Writer Fellow, she is the recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts grant and is currently working on a debut collection of short stories and a debut novel. Find her at dawnmillerwriter.com

• Submissions Editors

  Beth Sherman

  Beth Sherman is the author of the novella-in-flash, How to Get There from Here (Ad Hoc Fiction). She has had more than 250 stories published in literary journals, including Ghost Parachute, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres and SmokeLong. Her work appears in Best Microfiction 2024 and 2026 and Best Small Fictions 2025. She has a PhD from The CUNY Graduate Center and an MFA from Queens College. She’s also the author of five mystery novels.

• Submissions Editors

  Ani King

  Ani King (they/them) is a queer, gender non-compliant writer and artist from Michigan. They are a 2025 SmokeLong Emerging Writer fellow, the first place winner of the 2024 Blue Frog Annual Flash Fiction Contest, and a SmokeLong Grand Micro Competition 2023 finalist. Ani has additional work featured in SmokeLong Quarterly Review, Split Lip Magazine, Fractured Lit, Exposition Review, Wigleaf, and other terrific publications. Most recently, Ani is a Monarch Queer Literary Award recipient, with work on the Wigleaf Top 50 Long List, and coming soon in Best Small Fictions 2025 and Best Microfiction 2026. Ani’s first full length flash collection, Family Night, is available from Mason Jar Press (October 2026).

• Submissions Editors

  Vaibhavi Kerkar

  Vaibhavi Kerkar (she/her) is a writer from the Goa, India. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree at St. Xaviers College, Goa. Her work has appeared in Invisible City Literary Journal and SmokeLong Quarterly. Find her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vaibhavi_kerkar_/ (@vaibhavi_kerkar_).

• Submissions Editors

  Shareen Murayama

  Shareen Murayama’s most recent hybrid publication, The Mother Who Couldn’t Describe a Thing if She Could, was published in 2025 by Small Harbor Press. Her other books of poetry include Hey Girl, Are You in the Experimental Group? and Housebreak. Her work has been published in Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, Flash Frog, The McNeese Review, No Tokens, and many other journals. Her work has been anthologized in the Best Microfiction, and other recognitions include being Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net poetry, essay, and flash fiction nominee, and finalist for CRAFT‘s Creative Nonfiction Award. She is the recipient of Poets & Writers’ “5 of 50 Debut Authors,” the Prospect Street Writers House Residency in Vermont, and has given guest readings for the Bereket Writing Community in New York, the Bad Betty Press Tour in Bristol and London, as well as the Aldeburgh and Gloucester Poetry Festivals. She lives and writes in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.

• Submissions Editors

  Lisa Muschinski

  Lisa Muschinski’s work has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, HAD, FlashFlood, and elsewhere. A past winner of the University of Colorado’s Thompson Writing Awards, Lisa now teaches creative and academic writing at the University of Washington’s Youth & Teen Programs. https://www.lisamuschinski.com/

• Editor-in-Chief (Emeritus)

  Tara Laskowski

  Tara Laskowski is the author of the debut novel, One Night Gone, which won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. She has also written two short story collections, Modern Manners for Your Inner Demons and Bystanders. She won an Agatha Award in 2019 for her short fiction and was the longtime editor of the online flash fiction journal SmokeLong Quarterly. A graduate of Susquehanna University and George Mason University, Tara grew up in Pennsylvania and lives in Virginia. She was the editor-in-chief of SmokeLong from 2010 to 2020.

• Founding Editor (Emeritus)

  Dave Clapper

  Dave Clapper is the founding editor and former publisher of SmokeLong Quarterly. He founded the journal in 2003 with the vision to provide an expansive, international space online for flash fiction, free to read and free to submit to. We are proud to carry on this mission.