SmokeLong Quarterly

The SmokeLong Quarterly mentorship is for writers of the flash narrative as well as flash-adjacent writers looking to take the next step in their writing by establishing goals, deepening their understanding of the revision process, and learning how to be their own best editor. You can start whenever is right for you.

In this program, which usually takes between 6 and 8 weeks depending on the tempo you and your mentor choose, you will…

• be matched with an editor who will provide detailed feedback letters and guidance as you write and revise,
• submit 3 story/CNF drafts (up to 800 words each) for detailed feedback from your editor,
• submit 3 revisions (up to 1,000 words each) based on your mentor’s feedback and get feedback on your revision,
• receive two months of SmokeLong Fitness, the Community Workshop of SmokeLong Quarterly.
• and receive invitations to all SmokeLong online events during your mentorship.

The SmokeLong Mentorship also includes three Zoom calls:

• An introductory call where you’ll discuss your goals, writing process, work-in-progress, themes, etc. so your editor understands where you’re coming from and what you’re working toward.
• A mid-way call to discuss your progress and revisions so far.
• A final call to discuss submission strategies (including information about journals and competitions your work might be a good fit for), as well as brainstorming future story ideas so you will leave the mentorship with a game plan for the future.

Throughout the program your mentor will provide personalized prompts, reading suggestions, and advice on character development, plot, and more. We tailor all our material to you and your work. We will not send you packets of canned material.

Email us at editor@smokelong.com to start a conversation. If, however, you are ready to do this simply click on the link below.

Become a Mentee

 

Our Senior Editors:

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.

Sherrie Flick is the author of six books, including three short story collections. I Have Not Considered Happiness is her most recent collection (Autumn House Press). Her awards include a 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. Her work appears in Ploughshares, New England Review, Booth and the Norton anthologies New Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction Forward, and New Micro. She is a visiting professor for the West Virginia Wesleyan low-res MFA program and works as a developmental editor for Randolph Lundine. She lives in Pittsburgh.

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.

Jan Elman Stout’s fiction has appeared in Pure Slush, Literary Orphans, Jellyfish Review, Midwestern Gothic, Pidgeonholes, 100 Word Story and elsewhere. Her flash was nominated for The Best Small Fictions anthology in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Jan’s flash appears in The Best Microfiction 2020 anthology. Jan is currently working on a story collection. She can be reached on Twitter @janelmanstout.

Helen Rye lives in Norwich, UK. She has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Reflex Fiction contest and third place in the Bristol Short Story Prize. Her stories appear in The Best Small Fictions 2020 and have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, nominated for The Pushcart Prize and published in many journals and anthologies. She has an MA in Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia, where she was the 2019/20 Annabel Abbs Scholar.

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 Bitter over Sweet (2025) from Santa Fe Writers Project. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.