Reviewed by Erin Vachon In the title story to Robert Shapard’s first full-length collection, Bare Ana and Other Stories (Regal House 2024), two expectant parents visit a tattoo studio above Honolulu Harbor to get a prenatal tattoo, “a priceless gift” for their unborn child. “It’s your identity at birth; it says your parents care.” Through… Continue reading “This is the Meaning of my Life”: On Bare Ana and Other Stories by Robert Shapard| SmokeLong Quarterly
I. The rain doesn’t smell the same here, and neither do I. Warm, resinous, alive: piñons and junipers, greasewood and ponderosa, the ghost bloom of Apache plume snagged on old barbed wire, claret cup cactus blooming scarlet against broken stone—plants whose names I had to borrow from strangers. These smells have no words in my body; they arrive like teeth or tides or prayers from other shores. Sun encapsulated in tree limbs like fruit. A whip crackle of thunder behind...| SmokeLong Quarterly
Interviewed by Erin Vachon Erin Vachon: I had the privilege of reviewing your debut collection, Bare Ana and Other Stories [Regal House, 2025], so this is a pleasure. As a longtime editor of the Sudden and Flash Fiction series, you spent years foregrounding your editorial work before releasing your debut collection. Did anything about this… Continue reading An Interview with Robert Shapard| SmokeLong Quarterly
Each month we celebrate our current and previous workshop participants’ publications reported to us through Submittable (The SmokeLong Workshop Prize). Each of the publications below is eligible to win The SmokeLong Workshop Prize, which is awarded in January of the following year. At the moment, the grand prize is $500. This competition is free to… Continue reading SmokeLong Workshop Celebration — June 2025| SmokeLong Quarterly
In 2024 SmokeLong hosted our second SmokeLong Workshop Prize competition. Our workshop participants reported almost 300 publications to us before November 1, 2024. In 2025, we’ll be featuring one writer each week from The SmokeLong Workshop Prize long list. It’s an excellent series of interviews, each grappling with questions about workshopping, giving and receiving feedback,… Continue reading An Interview with Pegah Ouji| SmokeLong Quarterly
She and I were one year married when we made the decision and waited for the papers to remove the priest’s words and our vows. I told myself we could fix this, that it was because of the village’s new hunger. We’ll be better with full stomachs, I said. With the decision came a body… Continue reading Whale Fall| SmokeLong Quarterly
The Sauders are almost prepared for winter. Silo shuttered, woodpile tarped, perennial bed snipped of spent blooms. Mrs. Sauder is canning in the kitchen, she leaves the radio loud to listen for bad weather. The girl is upstairs stitching. Mr. Sauder kills a pig in the barn. Mr. Sauder slaughters to celebrate winter’s first snow.… Continue reading To Pieces| SmokeLong Quarterly
I opened a grocery store even though Nana told me I might as well stuff my money into the garbage disposal and let the blades whir the cash into bits the way tigers maul the humans who had raised them since birth. You can keep a pet tiger your whole life and it’ll still eat… Continue reading Grocery Store Mama| SmokeLong Quarterly
It’s one hour till the end of the world and Mr. Chan is watching the sky. He can’t see the asteroid behind his cataract clouds, but he enjoys the heat on his face. Six days a week, I walk through the park on the way home from the call center. And six days a week,… Continue reading Emergency Contact| SmokeLong Quarterly
I got this DNA test for my dog because he looks like a cloud and he looks like a luckdragon and he looks like something your lint roller picked up when you banged it around under the couch for the first time in three years and I was sick of people asking sick of having… Continue reading All Your Fragile History| SmokeLong Quarterly
My dad had students. He taught social work. They’d call to discuss the reading. They must’ve been insomniacs or late-night readers—or maybe vampires. They’d call at all hours of the night. I’d pick up. I’d hold the receiver in my hand. Then my dad picked up in the other room. Hang up, he said. OK,… Continue reading *69| SmokeLong Quarterly