Thank you to everyone who sent in work for our judges to consider this year. Narrowing down the field from 1200 entries to the list of 23 stories below has been a grand task for our 16 judges, an international group of SmokeLong editors and our emerging writer fellows. Thank you to these readers, who have all treated each entry with respect and positivity. All of the entries on the long list below were championed by at least one editor and are being discussed by as many as 16 editors at this very moment.
Our editorial process for competitions is similar to our process for general submissions. We initially assign two judges, and entries progress to the second round of judging if at least one judge votes MAYBE. A third judge is assigned at this point and sent to the senior editors if this judge votes MAYBE or YES. Shortlisted entries have all made it to this point. Judging competition entries is a bit different, though, from editing general submissions. We don’t edit competition entries substantively. We correct the odd typo. One misspelled word won’t knock a great story off the list. Anything larger than this would be a substantive edit, which wouldn’t be possible in a competition. For general submissions we consider substantive edits but suggest them before we offer publication.
Anonymous judging is ongoing. If your title appears on the list below, please feel free to celebrate on social media but do so without identifying your work. The finalists and winners will be announced about a week before the publication of the competition issue on June 15th. Congratulations to everyone on the shortlist below!
The SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction Shortlist
“Barbie”
“But First…”
“Cinnamon”
“Death, or the Guardians of the Galaxy Ride at Epcot”
“Flying in Survival Mode”
“Fruit of Our Body”
“Infinite Adolescence”
“It’s Zeus’s World And We’re Just Living In It”
“Just Because He Saw Me Playing Solitaire One Time”
“Makeday”
“Medusa”
“My Wife Wanted a Ghost”
“On Trees and Treefrogs”
“Small Something”
“Sugar”
“Sutures”
“Swell”
“The Lies Fishermen Tell”
“The Night I Learn to Be Furniture”
“The Things No One Tells You When Your Mother Turns Into a Tree”
“Tupenika Boatwright”
“What Cannot Fit Inside a Barrel”
“What Did Mike Say?”
