Kathy Fish Fellowship

Not sure how many people read this blog that don't also read SmokeLong, but I figure it can't hurt to mention it here as well:

Announcing the Kathy Fish Fellowship

It seems that many awards in people's names are established posthumously. We're ecstatic that we can recognize Kathy Fish while she's still very much alive and kicking. As she steps down as our Fiction Editor, we at SmokeLong want to recognize Kathy's enormous contributions to the magazine and to the writing community as a whole. In particular, Kathy has always been a great champion of new writers and has exhibited an uncanny talent for finding previously unpublished writers whose work just shines.

We want to foster that sort of commitment to new writers, and in that vein, we're creating the Kathy Fish Fellowship. All writers previously unpublished in SmokeLong Quarterly are eligible to apply. Following are the guidelines for application and the terms of the award itself:

Application Guidelines
1. Applications should be emailed to fellowship@smokelong.com.
2. Applications should include five samples of your flash fiction (stories of a thousand words or less). These samples may be unpublished or previously published in venues other than SmokeLong. We'll be reading these to get impressions of each applicant's writing. The writing samples should, as a whole, best reflect your ability, style(s), etc. Show us who you are as a writer through these samples.
3. Applications should include a few paragraphs (under a thousand words total) about what you hope to accomplish in the next year with your flash writing. Are there specific elements you want to improve? A larger story you want to tell through a series of flashes? Help us learn how we can help you realize your goals should you win this award.
4. Samples and paragraphs about goals, etc. should be included in the body of the email, rather than as attachments.
5. There is no application fee.
6. Application deadline is September 15, 2006.

Fellowship Awards
1. The winner of the 2007 Kathy Fish Fellowship will be considered a "writer in residence" at SmokeLong for each of the four issues to be published in 2007. Each issue will include one flash by the Fellowship winner.
2. The winner of the Fellowship will receive $500.00, to be paid as follows: $100.00 on announcement of the winner, and $100.00 upon publication of each of the four issues in 2007.
3. The winner will be announced December 15, 2006.

Again, this award is open to any writer not previously published in SmokeLong Quarterly. It is not restricted to writing program students (as we are all, in some way, students of writing), although we will certainly be distributing this announcement to various writing programs. We also encourage teachers of writing to pass this announcement along to their students.

We're looking forward to reading your applications, and we want to once again extend our deepest gratitude to Kathy for all she's done for SmokeLong and for writers of flash fiction. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Kath.