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SmokeLong Quarterly

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The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest — The Finalists

December 5, 2024

Arriving at our finalists this year for The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest has been so difficult. The following list of micros presents six narratives that most of our judges felt accomplished something remarkable. It’s hard to describe what that “something” is. We read thousands of micros each year in the SmokeLong queue, so we’ve seen every imaginable story, some many times. Maybe it’s that burst of something memorable and important that washes over the reader like a baptism? Is that too dramatic? Probably. But micros are dramatic. There’s never even a hint of So what? in a successful micro.

The micros below will appear in the December issue of SmokeLong Quarterly alongside four stories we chose from 3000 submissions in the general queue from August 16 to November 15. Congratulations to everyone on this list; you’ve done something remarkable. Please feel free to share the news that your work will be published in December, but please do so without identifying your micros. Anonymous judging is ongoing.

Thank you also to everyone who entered this competition. We wish you lots of success with your writing.

The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest – The Finalists

I See You
In War, Daughters Bury Their Fathers
Obit
strangers breathe air into you
The Shell
the sky didn’t slip inside

Again, please remember that anonymous judging is ongoing. Please do not identify your work. We hope to announce the top three places very soon. 

ornament

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Previously published as well as previously unpublished work will be considered.