SmokeLong Quarterly

Over the next few months, we’ll be introducing our submissions editors so that you, dear writers and readers, might have a clearer idea of who we are, who reads your work first at SmokeLong, and what they love to see in the SmokeLong submissions queue. We are all writers at SmokeLong, so we know that sharing work can be difficult. Our submissions editors are all experienced flash writers and participate in the discussion throughout the editorial process. Your work is assigned to two submissions editors and sent to the senior editors if at least one of the submissions editors votes MAYBE on the submission. At SmokeLong we are always rooting for you.  – Christopher Allen, Publisher

I am so excited to start this new series sharing our wonderful submissions editors with you. We gave all of our submissions editors ten questions and let them choose four or five to answer. We begin this series with Ani King! For this first interview, Ani has answered all ten of the questions so that you can see all of the questions from the get go. I hope you find Ani’s answers inspiring and informative. – Melissa Llanes Brownlee, Senior Submissions Editor

 

What excites you about a submission?

I love it when a submission starts right from the go and never stops moving. Pacing will vary of course, but with stories that immerse me immediately I find I am happy to be pulled through at the story’s speed.

What’s something about a submission that makes you want to give it a thumbs-up?

Surprising language at the line level paired with the feeling that every word, every bit of punctuation matters and was intentional.

When do you read submissions? Do you have a special place?

I try to read in the mornings while it’s quiet and I am at my most open—the day hasn’t had a chance to shift me in any specific direction and I feel like I can approach each story I’m reading from that space and give it the attention it deserves. I usually do this in my office/studio, sometimes while accompanied by cats.

How do you feel about content warnings?

I appreciate them, personally. It doesn’t mean I won’t read something very often, but it lets me brace a little when it comes to personally sensitive topics and deliberately approach them from a stable place.

What is your advice for writers submitting to SmokeLong?

Compression, compression, compression! The note I leave most often is that a story would benefit from compression, because it would create more immediacy and tension. Every component of a flash piece needs to be necessary, and a lot of times my thought is that I don’t need exposition or explanation, I need to be in the moment presented.

What do you love about flash? Reading or writing it?

Flash is my favorite! As a reader, I love how massive the stories can be for a few hundred words. It’s always surprising me—people do such amazing, experimental things with form, topic, style, perspective. As a writer, I love how much play there is, how you can break the rules without exhausting a reader’s tolerance for stand out elements, like repetition or the breathless sentence.

What are you reading now – besides SmokeLong submissions?

I am at this exact moment reading Haikyuu!!, a manga series by Haruichi Furudate I affectionately say is about shout-y high school volleyball idiots; Live Oak, With Moss, which has art by Brian Selznick paired with a cycle of twelve poems by Walt Whitman about a love story between two men; Helen of Troy, 1993 by Maria Zoccola, which is a poetry collection focused on Helen of Troy if she were a young mother in Tennessee; and I just started Fortune’s Wake by C.L. Clark because y’all, there are butch sword lesbians and I really need that in my life.

What are you writing now?

I am alternating between working on a novel-in-flash project about a queer person in the 1990’s who partially transforms into a deer, and drafting guest blog posts as part of promoting Family Night. This includes an article about a literary tattoo and its connection to Pippi Longstocking, Anne Shirley, Meg and Jo March, and Lolly Willowes, plus a b-sides playlist for the book itself, and more than a few recommended reading posts in which I get to sing the praises of my favorite flash collections!

What brings you joy?

I think I am at an age and place in my life where I am getting better at seeking out and making joy, instead of hoping it comes, so a lot of small things: the landscape while I’m driving, the rabbits who probably live under our back deck, my cats doing cat things (oh big stretch!), having a brief but nice conversation with a stranger. Mostly I am trying to be open to joy coming from any small place, any brief moment.

How did you find your way to flash?

In 2014, I was part of a community of writers who largely worked on short stories instead of novels (which most people in the larger space were working on) and someone must have brought a few flash pieces to the party because from that point on, I was hooked.

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