SmokeLong Quarterly

Masthead

• Publisher 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 over 100 literary journals and anthologies. Allen has judged The Bath Flash Fiction Award, Micro Madness, the Cambridge Flash Fiction Award, and the Bridport Prize. He has a BA in music business from Belmont University and an MA in English from Middle Tennessee State University. Allen is a nomad.

• 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 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 from the University of East Anglia, where she was the 2019/20 Annabel Abbs Scholar.

• 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 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.

• Senior Editors

  Jasmine Sawers

  Jasmine Sawers is a Kundiman fellow and Indiana University MFA alum. Their work has won awards from Ploughshares, NANO Fiction, Fractured Lit, and Press 53, and has appeared in such journals and anthologies as Norton’s Flash Fiction America, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf. Their book, The Anchored World, was a finalist for the 2023 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Originally from Buffalo, Sawers now lives outside St. Louis.

  On hiatus.

• 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, the Multigenre Reviewer-at-Large for The Rumpus, the Multigenre + Chapbook Editor for Split/Lip Press, and an Editorial Panelist for Sarabande’s 2025 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 Microfictions. Erin writes and edits outside Providence, RI.

• Associate Editor, French

  Michelle Bailat-Jones

  Michelle Bailat-Jones is a writer and translator. Her novel Fog Island Mountains (Tantor, 2014) won the 2013 Christopher Doheny Award from the Center for Fiction. She has translated the work of C.F. Ramuz (Beauty on Earth, Onesuch Press, 2013; What if the Sun…, 2016) as well as Julia Allard Daudet, Claude Cahun, Laure Mi-Hyun Croset and others. Her short fiction, poetry, translations and criticism have appeared in various journals including The Kenyon Review, Cerise Press, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Two Serious Ladies, Spolia Mag, PANK, The Rumpus and The Quarterly Conversation. 

• 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

  Alicia Bakewell

  Alicia Bakewell is a short fiction writer from Western Australia. Her work has appeared in Ellipsis Zine, Spelk Fiction, Moon Park Review and others. Her flash fiction piece ‘Barely Casting a Shadow’ was a winner of Reflex Fiction. She is trying to give up writing poetry.

  On hiatus.

• 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 poet, novelist, and storyteller. They studied English Literature with Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and hold an MA in Medieval and Early Modern Textual Cultures. They have written for the LGBTQ+ crowdfunding platform Pride Pocket, and their work has appeared in Bloodbath Literary Zine, Lighthouse Journal, and The Selkie. They were a judge for The Dracula Society’s 2021 Children of the Night Award, and Time’s Fool, their debut novel, was published by Unbound in 2018.

• Submissions Editors

  Josh Denslow

  Josh Denslow’s debut collection, Not Everyone Is Special, is available from 7.13 Books. His recent stories have appeared in Catapult, Pithead Chapel, wigleaf, BULL, Bending Genres, apt, and Split Lip. He plays the drums in the band Borrisokane and spends a lot of time eating pizza with his three boys.

• Submissions Editors

  Gillian O'Shaughnessy

  Gillian O’Shaughnessy is a writer and reader from Walyalup/Fremantle in Western Australia. A former broadcaster and journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Gillian has also curated Writers Weekend for Perth Festival. Her short fiction has been widely published in journals and anthologies, including the Best Small Fictions in 2023 and 2024. Her awards include the Welkin Mini, London Independent Story Prize and the Fractured Lit. Anthology Prize, and she’s been shortlisted in Bath and Bridport, among others. Find her at gillianoshaughnessy.com

• Submissions Editors

  Patricia Quintana Bidar

  Patricia Quintana Bidar is a writer from the Port of Los Angeles region. Her first publication came at age 57. Patricia’s short fiction has appeared or is upcoming in Waxwing, Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, The Pinch, Atticus Review, and Moon City and has been widely anthologized, including in Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), Best Small Fictions 2023 and 2024 (Alternating Current), and Best Microfiction 2023 (Pelekinesis Press). Her novelette, Wild Plums (ELJ Press) is available from Amazon. Her collection of short works, Pardon Me For Moonwalking, is coming in December 2025 from Unsolicited Press. 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.

• Submissions Editors

  Vincent Anioke

  Vincent Anioke is a software engineer at Google. He was born and raised in Nigeria but now lives in Canada. His short stories have appeared in Split Lip Magazine, Carve, Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, and MIT Tech Review, among others. He was also shortlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and is currently working on his debut anthology.

• Submissions Editors

  Hema Nataraju

  Hema Nataraju is an Indian-American writer and mom, currently based in Singapore. Her work has most recently appeared in Booth, Wigleaf, 100-word Story, Ruby Literary, and Nurture Literary, among others. One of her flash pieces made it to the 2022 Wigleaf Top 50 longlist. She tweets as m_ixedbag.

• Submissions Editors

  Janna Miller

  Librarian, mother, and minor trickster, Janna has published in places like SmokeLong Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, F(r)iction, and Cheap Pop. Her first novel, Ivy in the Age of Falling Ash, makes rude faces at her while she works on her second. Nominated for Best Small Fictions. Generally, if the toaster blows up, it is not her fault. You can reach her on twitter @ScribblerMiller

• Submissions Editors

  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

  Julia Strayer

  Julia Strayer has stories in, or forthcoming at, The Cincinnati Review, Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review Online, SmokeLong Quarterly, Atticus Review, and others, including The Best Small Fictions. She teaches at New York University. www.juliastrayer.com

• Submissions Editors

  Marcus Tan

  Marcus Tan is a writer from Singapore residing in Hong Kong. His latest story, ‘All This is Yours to Lose’, was a finalist for the 2021 Masters Review Short Story Award and was shortlisted for the 2021 Exeter Story Prize. His fiction has been anthologized in The Best Small Fictions 2021 and published in Prime Number Magazine, No Contact Magazine, and elsewhere. Find him at marcus-tan.com.

  On hiatus.

• Submissions Editors

  Brendan Stephens

  Brendan Stephens is a writer and assistant professor at Northwestern Oklahoma State University. His work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Pinch, Epoch, the Southeast Review, The Hopkins Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His awards include multiple Inprint Donald Barthelme awards, an Into the Void Fiction Prize, a Sequestrum Emerging Writer Award, and inclusion in Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions.

• 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. 

• Submissions Editors

  Sabrina Dudgeon-Swift

  Sabrina Dudgeon-Swift is descended from the Bardi people from north of Broome, and the Gija people in the East Kimberley. Sabrina grew up in Darwin, and now lives in Western Australia, Perth. Her short stories and flash fiction writing have been published by Margaret River Press, UWA Westerly and Night Parrot Press. Sabrina especially enjoys writing for children, where her work can be found at Fremantle Press and has presented at the Perth Writers Festival and the Kimberley Writers festival. 

• 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.

• Consulting Editor

  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.

• 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.