SmokeLong Quarterly

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Paul Riker

Paul Riker is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Purdue University. He is the recipient of the National Society of Arts and Letters’ Holl Merit and Jones Merit Award, its top prize in literature for the state of Indiana. He was also a finalist for the 2020 Iowa Review Award in Fiction, as well as the 2021 Montana Prize in Fiction. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in Salt Hill, CutBank, the Nashville Review, Drunk Monkeys, Crack the Spine, and elsewhere. He lives in Lafayette, Indiana.

Stories in Smokelong Quarterly

Story: Send Us Your Stories
Interview: Smoke & Mirrors with Paul Riker

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The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest

Deadline November 15th!

The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest (The Mikey) is now an annual competition celebrating and compensating the best micro fiction and nonfiction online.

The grand prize winner of The Mikey is automatically nominated for Best Small Fictions and any other prize we deem appropriate. In addition, we will pay the grand prize winner $1000. Second place: $500. Third place $300. Finalists: $100. All finalists and placers will be published in the December ’25 issue of SmokeLong.

Previously published as well as previously unpublished work will be considered.

Learn more…