SmokeLong Quarterly

This week, students from Professor Abby Manzella’s Flash Non/Fiction Workshop at Truman State University read our submission queue. The students are Regan Bohanan, Cristyn Chauvenne, John Chua, LJ Johnson, Sedona Sayers, and Dylana Stoppel.

SLQ: Tell us a little about yourselves.

We include both advanced undergraduate and graduate students at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. Some of us are training to be teachers and some are already in the classroom. Others are just excited to gain a better sense of the reading world with plans to head into fields as various as accounting and editing, but we all have a love for literature and creative writing! Don’t worry, though, we have other interests as well, such as football, surfing, plants, working on a cattle ranch, and just enjoying our friends and pets. Check out one of our cat friends in our photo!

SLQ: Tell us about this creative writing class you’re taking and how reading for SmokeLong fit into what you’ve been learning.

This class is an upper-level English course diving into flash in fiction and nonfiction genres. We focus on the craft of writing, incorporating research, and looking at how short form content can produce a long-term impact. We have observed a variety of perspectives and writing techniques to model in our own work. We’ve also read lots of informational/educational types of flash and lots of memoir/anecdotal types of flash, and SmokeLong sandwiches those ideas and introduces a more introspective type of flash. It also fits well as we research flash-focused literary journals. Reading for this magazine asks us to apply our perspectives and the lessons we’ve learned in a professional setting.

SLQ: Now that you’ve read through our submission queue, how has your perspective on flash fiction changed or expanded?

Our perspective has expanded through seeing that the length of a piece doesn’t necessarily determine how much “story” it can contain. The submissions we read were incredibly varied, and yet the best of them demonstrated in-depth narrative arcs in only a few short lines. There is an impressive amount of intentionality that goes into this genre; flash forces writers to be decisive in how they write. Flash authors are able to convince readers that a narrative can occur in a snapshot but no two pieces will ever reveal the same image. The SmokeLong submission queue shows that there is a vast range of voices crafting such a compact genre.

SLQ: What was your biggest takeaway or surprise from reading our queue?

One of our big takeaways is just the wide spectrum of writing that flash allows for. There’s room for all different genres (fantasy, science fiction, dark comedy, etc.) and a variety of different stylistic choices and voices. Some read like a moment, a memory, or even a feeling. What seems most impressive is what can be accomplished in such a small amount of text. When one is limited in length, there has to be precision and integrity. Exclude the wrong thing and the story could lose an important emotional beat; alternatively, misplaced inclusions could waste precious word space. Flash can be incredibly small in length without feeling small in scope.

SLQ: Who are some of your favorite writers?

Our favorite writers come from a mix of genres, but the expectations of the writers remain the same: we want someone who will build a strong connection with readers and will absorb us into their stories. That could mean the classics that you can never go wrong with, like Edgar Allan Poe and the Brontë sisters, or it could also mean the dystopias that become more real every day, like Suzanne Collins and Matt Dinniman. Finally, we reach for the ones that will have you wanting to laugh, cry, and contemplate life like Jim Butcher and Donna Tartt.

SLQ: Name a SmokeLong piece you’ve enjoyed and why?

Before reading the queue, we did our own explorations of pieces published by SmokeLong. Here are a few of the works we enjoyed:

“Cadillacs on the Moon” by Travis Flatt for its emotional honesty and playfulness.

“Octopus Heart” by Latifa Ayad for creating a central metaphor that makes anxiety and depression tangible.

“Gods of Hunger, Gods of Want” by Candice May for its ability to take something personal and painful and make it recognizable.

“Bone” by Didi Wood for the dark imagery of self-doubt and loneliness that draw us in.

“Savior” by Seth Gleckman for exploring perspectives of hard work.

“House of My Soon-to-Be Ex” by Claudia Monpere for its experimental form that challenges setting through structure and contrast.

SLQ: What are your favorite reading/studying snacks?

Our favorite snacks include—but are not limited to—Cheeto Puffs, chocolate oranges, popcorn, pretzel sticks with M&Ms, oolong tea, and coffee. We all enjoy something with a little flavor when diving into the next adventure on a page, even if it sometimes leaves behind a little orange dust.