SmokeLong Quarterly

Staff

• Editor and Publisher

  Christopher Allen

  Christopher Allen is the author of the flash fiction collection Other Household Toxins (Matter Press, 2018). His work has appeared widely and is forthcoming in The Best Small Fictions 2022 and Flash Fiction America (Norton) in February 2023. He has a BA in music business from Belmont University and an MA in English from Middle Tennessee State University. Allen is a nomad.

• Coordinating Editor

  Shasta Grant

  Shasta Grant  is the author of the chapbook 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, Hobart, wigleaf, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and divides her time between Singapore and Indianapolis.

• 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.

• Art Director

  Paul Bilger

  Paul Bilger’s photography has appeared at Qarrtsiluni, Brevity, and Kompresja. His work has also been featured on music releases by Dead Voices on Air and Autistici. When not taking pictures, he is a lecturer in philosophy and film theory at Chatham University.

• 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 Editor, SmokeLong en Español

  María Alejandra Barrios

  María Alejandra Barrios Vélez is a pushcart nominated writer born in Barranquilla, Colombia. She has lived in Bogotá and Manchester where in 2016 she completed a Masters degree in Creative Writing from The University of Manchester. Her stories have been published in Hobart Pulp, Reservoir Journal, Bandit Fiction, Cosmonauts Avenue, Jellyfish Review,  Lost Balloon, Shenadoah Literary, Vol.1 Brooklyn and El Malpensante. Her poetry has been published in The Acentos Review. Her work has been supported by organizations like Vermont Studio Center, Caldera Arts Center and the New Orleans Writing Residency.

• Senior Editors

  Sherrie Flick

  Sherrie Flick is the author of the novel Reconsidering Happiness (University of Nebraska Press) and two short story collections Thank Your Lucky Stars and Whiskey, Etc., both with Autumn House Press. Recent work appears in Ploughshares, New England Review, Pithead Chapel, and Booth. She is a senior editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, served as series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018 with guest editor Aimee Bender (Braddock Avenue Books), and is co-editor for Flash Fiction America (W. W. Norton, 2023). 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 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.

• 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

  Sharmini Aphrodite

  Sharmini Aphrodite was born in Sabah. She was raised – and still lives – between the cities of Johor Bahru and Singapore. Her short fiction has appeared online and in print, and has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Australian Book Review Jolley Short Story Prize, and the Singapore National Art Council’s Golden Point Awards. Her art writing can be found online.

  On hiatus.

• Submissions Editors

  April Bradley

  April Bradley is a Durham, North Carolina-based writer and editor. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Blink Ink, CHEAP POP, jmww, and Narratively, and her work has been honored by residency support from Vermont Studio Center and Rivendell Writer’s Colony. She is the founding publisher and editor of Ruby Literary Magazine and Press and serves as an associate editor for fiction at Pidgeonholes and as a submissions editor at SmokeLong Quarterly. She has a master’s degree in Ethics from Yale Divinity School.

• Submissions Editors

  Nancy Au

  Nancy Au is a genderqueer, bisexual artist and educator with a degree in sociocultural anthropology from U.C. Berkeley and an MFA from San Francisco State University. Au is the co-founder of The Escapery, a collective of artists dedicated to diversity, and to writing and art as a form of resistance. Au’s short stories, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, and essays–which have appeared in over thirty literary journals–often center on the experiences of the elderly, the young, immigrants, and first-generation US-born characters. She endeavors to write about (and to amplify, diversify, complicate) the voices that have been historically ignored (or stereotyped or diminished or demonized) within academia and literature. She is particularly interested in exploring the lives of American-born Chinese and Chinese immigrants. Au’s full-length collection, SPIDER LOVE SONG AND OTHER STORIES, (Acre Books, September 2019), is longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for debut short story collection. Au is currently working on a second collection of short fiction.

• 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 lives in Philadelphia and is an Arcadia University MFA alum. His novel, Panic Years, was published in 2018 by Tailwinds Press. His short stories can be found in SmokeLong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, Drunk Monkeys, and others. He tweets @danieldifranco.

• Submissions Editors

  Farhana Khalique

  Farhana Khalique is a writer, voiceover artist and teacher from London. Her writing has appeared in Reflex Press, Visual Verse, Lighthouse Literary Journal, Litro, Popshot Quarterly, The Good Journal, sister-hood magazine, and has been anthologised in The Brown Anthology: Language, City of Stories, Dividing Lines, and Happy Birthday to Me. Farhana has been longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, shortlisted for The Asian Writer Short Story Prize, and won a Word Factory Apprentice Award. She has also written for the stage and performed her work at Tara Theatre in London. Find Farhana @HanaKhalique.

• Submissions Editors

  Zainab A. Omaki

  Zainab A. Omaki is a Nigerian prose and screen writer. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia where she was the recipient of the Miles Morland African Writer’s scholarship. Her work has appeared from The Rumpus, Afreada, TSS, Ake Review and other spaces. She was selected by Chimamanda Adiche for the Purple Hibiscus Trust writing workshop in 2018. She was longlisted for the Show Me Yours Prize and the BBC Comedy Writersroom. She is working on a novel.

  On hiatus.

• 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

  Tim Craig

  Originally from Manchester, Tim Craig now lives in London. In 2018 he won the Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction and has also placed third — and been commended — in the Bath Flash Fiction Award. His stories have also appeared in the Best Microfiction Anthology and the BIFFY50.

  On hiatus.

• Submissions Editors

  Jemimah Wei

  Jemimah Wei’s a writer and host based in Singapore and New York. She’s a Singapore National Arts Council Scholar and was recently named a 2020 Felipe De Alba Fellow at Columbia University. Her work has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, X-R-A-Y Literary magazine, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and Math Paper Press anthology “From the Belly of the Cat”, amongst others. She is a columnist for No Contact magazine, and is presently at work on a novel and several television projects. Follow her on Twitter at @jemmawei.

• 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

  Shreya Vikram

  Shreya Vikram is a writer based in India. A Dorothy West Scholar, she has been recognised by the Adroit Prizes for Prose. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart Pulp, Rumpus, Up the Staircase Quarterly and elsewhere.

• Submissions Editors

  Gillian O'Shaughnessy

  Gillian O’Shaughnessy spent 25 years as a journalist, broadcaster and senior editor with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and has curated the literature program for Perth Festival. She is a Pushcart-nominated writer with work in or forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Fractured Lit, Jellyfish Review, Splonk and Moonpark Review, among others. Find her on Twitter @GillOshaughness

• Submissions Editors

  Jiksun Cheung

  Jiksun Cheung is a short fiction writer from Hong Kong. His work is published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Atticus Review, The Molotov Cocktail, and elsewhere. He was a Smokey finalist, and has been nominated for Best Microfiction and The Shirley Jackson Award. He and his wife share their home with two boisterous toddlers and enough playdough to last a lifetime. Find him on Twitter @JiksunCheung and http://jiksun.com.

• Submissions Editors

  Patricia Q. Bidar

  Patricia Q. Bidar hails from San Pedro, California, with deep family roots in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. She is an alum of the UC Davis Graduate Writing Program. Patricia’s stories have appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Sou’wester, Little Patuxent Review, and Pidgeonholes, among other places. Patricia’s work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. When she is not writing fiction, Patricia reads, enjoys nature, and ghostwrites for nonprofit organizations. She lives with her DJ husband and unusual dog in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit Patricia at www.patriciaqbidar.com or on Twitter (@patriciabidar).

• Submissions Editors

  Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar

  Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar is an Indian American writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Reflex Press, Flash Fiction Online, and elsewhere. Her work has been highly commended in National Flash Fiction Day Microfiction Competition, earned an honorable mention in Flash Fiction Magazine Editor’s Choice Award, and shortlisted in the SmokeLong Quarterly Grand Micro Contest. She has been nominated multiple times for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. She is currently an editor at Janus Literary. More at https://saraspunyfingers.com. Reach her @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 is forthcoming in Sept. 2021 with Valley Press. 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.

• 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. Find him on Twitter at

• Submissions Editors

  Hema Nataraju

  Hema Nataraju is a Singapore-based writer and mom of two humans. Her work has most recently appeared in Wigleaf, Janus Literary, Nurture Literary, Atlas + Alice among others. 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

  Starting September 2022

• Submissions Editors

  Eliot Li

  Eliot Li lives in California. His work appears or is forthcoming in Pithead Chapel, The Pinch, SmokeLong Quarterly, Pidgeonholes, AAWW’s The Margins, and elsewhere. He can be found on twitter @EliotLi2.

  Starting September 2022

• Readers in Residence -- Issue 77

  Melissa Llanes Brownlee

  Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer, living in Japan, has work published or forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Booth, Pleiades, The Citron Review, Milk Candy Review, (mac)ro(mic), Necessary Fiction, NFFR, trampset, Superstition Review, jmww, Emerge Literary Journal, Newfound, Reckon Review, The Hennepin Review, Lost Balloon, The Best Small Fictions 2021, and Best Microfiction 2022. Read Hard Skin, her short story collection, coming soon from Juventud Press. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at www.melissallanesbrownlee.com.

• Readers in Residence -- Issue 77

  Corey Farrenkopf

  Corey Farrenkopf lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Gabrielle, and works as a librarian. He is the fiction editor for The Cape Cod Poetry Review. His work has been published in The Southwest Review, Catapult, Tiny Nightmares, SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Reckoning, Flash Fiction Online, Bourbon Penn, and elsewhere. To learn more, follow him on twitter @CoreyFarrenkopf.

• Readers in Residence -- Issue 77

  Adeola Opeyemi 

  Adeola Opeyemi is a writer and developmental editor. She was a finalist for the 2015 Writivism Short Story Prize, 2016/2019 Morland Foundation Scholarship, and a fellow of the Ebedi Writers’ Residency. A 2020 Miles Morland African Writer Scholar at the University of East Anglia, Adeola has been published in online and print journals. She has served as editor on several lit mags, including Sankofa magazine, Afridiaspora and Yaba Left Review. She is the editor/co-editor of My Africa, My City (an anthology of writings about African cities) and Obibini Te Ase: an anthology of new writing from Ghana.

• Readers in Residence -- Issue 77

  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

• Readers in Residence -- Issue 77

  Nathan Xie 

  Nathan Xie is a writer from Connecticut. His work appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Margins (AAWW), Gone Lawn, Janus Literary, and more. His website is nathan-xie.com.

• Founding Editor (Emeritus)

  Dave Clapper

  Dave Clapper is the founding editor and 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.

• Issue 76 Cover Artist

  Meg Toftness

  Meg Toftness is a painter, mama and metalsmith at Bad Penny Silver Company (@megtoftnessart)