Each year, SmokeLong hosts The SmokeLong Workshop Prize competition, a free-to-enter competition for anyone who’s participated in a SmokeLong workshop. To date, our workshop participants (past and current) have reported over 1000 publications to us through The SmokeLong Workshop Prize form on Submittable. In 2025 we read just over 400 entries. The SmokeLong Workshop Prize competition is competitive. All of the entries have been published, a prerequisite for entering, so the standard is high. We found so much to love in all the entries.
Narrowing down the field to a long list has taken weeks. Please know that we’ve given everyone’s work the care it deserves and that we congratulate everyone on their publication success. We are thrilled that so many of you have benefited from the SmokeLong workshop you participated in.
In the coming days, we’ll be announcing our shortlist. What a task. Please bear with us. If you see your title on the list below, please feel free to celebrate on social media but please do so without identifying your title or titles. Anonymous judging (where possible) is ongoing. The nature of this competition—considering all entries are previously published—often makes anonymous judging difficult, but we are doing our utmost to ensure impartiality.
The SmokeLong Workshop Prize Long List
“A Fence for Christmas”
“A fire of her own”
“A Second Mother”
“Antarctica in the Basement”
“Below Zero Days”
“Black-Red”
“Blemished Plums”
“Blessed”
“Bra Shopping”
“Break Point”
“Buckets”
“Bullets are Not Circles but They Leave Circles Behind”
“Cadillacs on the Moon”
“Camera Roll, May 2022”
“Canned”
“Closer Than They Appear”
“Drifting”
“Gentle”
“Give Us a Hand”
“Goat Song”
“Gretel”
“Hands”
“Her Body a Birdcage”
“Holes”
“Holy Motor”
“Indiana Jones And The Giant Pit Of Consequences”
“Jeopardy”
“Kukhlefl”
“Leaving”
“Let Me Pretend”
“Like Dynamite”
“Like Jesus in a Dead Man’s Float”
“Love with a Troll in a Sweet Potato Vine”
“Mother Perfect”
“My Baby Fights Sleep The Way My Father Fights Death”
“No Place Like a Kaleidoscope”
“No Promises”
“Old Houses Are Like That”
“On a Bed in The Holiday Inn Express”
“On a High Note”
“Ontkommer”
“Preserves”
“Prior to The State Inquiry, My Parents Ran a Children’s Prison”
“Sail On, Valhallan”
“Signals”
“Snails Are People Too”
“Some Cannibals”
“Something Out of a Horror Movie”
“Something They Taught You in High School”
“The Altar of Saint Cindy”
“The Bright Jars of Our Bodies”
“The Coachman’s Forgiveness”
“The Climb”
“The Election Goes Badly”
“The Fire”
“The HOA rules don’t apply”
“The Last Cinematographer in Space”
“The Night the Walrus Came to Take My Baby”
“The Ocean, the Ocean”
“The Pit”
“The Tao of Thorstein Codbiter”
“The Thing People Know About Someone Before They Are Formally Introduced”
“The Word Disorder”
“The World According to My Grandmother”
“Under the Sea”
“Vagina First”
“Warrior”
“We Are Dingo Pack”
“What we talk about when we want to talk about Fight Club”
“When the Dalai Lama Forgives Your Human Failures as a Best Friend”
“Whoosh!”
Again, congratulations to all our workshop participants. You are all stars.
Christopher Allen
Publisher, SmokeLong Quarterly
