Virgie Townsend is a fiction writer, journalist, and editor from Syracuse, New York. Her short stories have been featured in such publications as Tin House’s Flash Fridays, Gargoyle, and WhiskeyPaper, as well as the anthologies SmokeLong Quarterly: The Best of the First Ten Years and Best of Pif, Volume One. Her nonfiction has been published or is forthcoming in The Atlantic, Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, and others. Visit her online at www.virgietownsend.com.
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The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest
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Previously published as well as previously unpublished work will be considered.