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SmokeLong Quarterly

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Letter from the Editor (44)

Story by Tara Laskowski June 23, 2014

art by Marty D. Ison

Dear Friends,

Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes…

I’ve got some very exciting SmokeLong news to announce. First, we are working on a long-awaited redesign of our web site, which will give us a new look and feel. Though we will continue to feature everything SmokeLong is ‘famous’ for—author interviews, artwork, archives and all-year, all-the-time open submissions—we hope to also make our stories and issues more easy to read, our interviews easier to find, and our authors and guest editors front and center. So look for that later this year!

We also have some staff changes to report. Sadly, our long-time editor Beth Cox Thomas has retired from staff to allow for some much-needed writing time. We will miss her dearly, but hope to see some amazing stories, books and other successes coming her way soon.

We are thrilled to bring aboard our newest staff member, Erin Fitzgerald. Erin is a fantastic editor and writer and we are thrilled to have her. Check her stories out in places such as PANK, Hobart, Salt Hill, and Wigleaf. She lives in western Connecticut.

We also welcome our two new Interview Editors—Michael Czyzniejewski (whose last name I WILL learn to spell) and Karen Craigo. If you’ve ever read one of Mike’s SLQ interviews, you will know why we are beyond belief thrilled about this. Check out the latest one with Matthew Fogarty in this issue! Karen and Mike will be making sure our author interviews are insightful and hilarious.

So enough about us—here is Issue 44 for you! It’s a good, eclectic bunch this go-around—featuring Farrah Fawcett, post-apocalyptic adultery, ghosts, Easy Rider, punk rockers and masturbating truck drivers, among other things.

Thanks to all our writers, artists and editors for continuing to make this all possible.

Love,

Tara Laskowski
Senior Editor, SmokeLong Quarterly

About the Author

Tara Laskowski

Tara Laskowski has been editor at SmokeLong Quarterly since 2010. Her short story collection Bystanders was hailed by Jennifer Egan as “a bold, riveting mash-up of Hitchcockian suspense and campfire-tale chills.” She is also the author of Modern Manners For Your Inner Demons, tales of dark etiquette. Her fiction has been published in the Norton anthology Flash Fiction International, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Mid-American Review, and numerous other journals, magazines, and anthologies. Tara lives and works in a suburb of Washington, D.C.

About the Artist

A native of Ohio, Marty D. Ison lives with his wife transplanted in the sands of the Gulf of Mexico. He studied fine arts at Saint Petersburg College. In addition to the visual arts, he writes poetry, short stories, and novels. See more of Ison’s work here.

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A SmokeLong Summer 26!

A SmokeLong Summer 26 is closer than you think. This year we’re starting early and staying late. The summer just got longer.

As always, at the heart of A SmokeLong Summer is our peer-review workshop in small groups of around 15 writers, drafting to 3 writing tasks each week. Our peer-review workshop is all in writing, so you can participate from anywhere, anytime. This summer our writing tasks will be generative and thematically leaning towards community. Our theme this year: “The Global Flash Village”. Writing doesn’t have a be a game of Solitaire; it can be a team sport.

Our participants often say their writing has dramatically increased in community. A SmokeLong Summer 26 will take you around the world, introducing you to writers from every corner of our beautiful planet.

Learn more…