Current issue
Inside the issue
Two authors have published here before.
From the editors
For the past year, Neon & Smoke has been focused on becoming.
With this issue, we’ve finally arrived.
Not to say that we’ve made it. Not to suggest that there aren’t still things to figure out. There will always be that.
But we’d like to believe that you know us.
We publish work that is messy, provocative, funny, uncomfortable, sexual, racial, violent, compassionate, and sometimes contradictory.
Today, we debut a new home for it. Sleeker. Sexier. Smokier.
But the new site is more than that. It’s an opportunity to elevate the many authors and artists who have graciously shared their work with us. Please check out our new Contributors page and meet the people who have joined us on this journey, some of them more than once. Every name links directly to the work they’ve shared with us.
As for inside the issue? Well, what can we tell you? We’re giving you what we’ve promised.
We have characters unabashedly longing for interracial attention and others questioning it. Some characters are haunted by their own sensuality, and others are haunted by things they’ve done, or perhaps should have done.
All of them are Neon & Smoke.
While you’re here, please check out our newest feature, The Author Spotlight. This issue spotlights two former submitters, Stan J Wild and Jessica Edmond. Not only does Jessica have a story in this issue, her art adorns our cover.
You know that we love to ramble, and we love your thoughts. If you have feedback or suggestions, don’t hesitate to send them our way.
And don’t forget, flash fiction submissions are open. The theme? This time, make it smoky.
(No, it means nothing at all. But you gotta admit, it sounds catchy.)
Here’s to what the smoke will bring in the next twelve months!
We appreciate each and every one of you.
T & J
We read for the piece that made someone nervous to send it.
Where the editors say what they are actually looking for, at more length than a guidelines page allows.
Literary magazines often describe the work they want in beautiful, ambitious language—but writers can still finish reading the guidelines with no clear idea whether their story belongs. This post examines the gap between mission statements and useful submission guidance, why greater editorial transparency benefits both writers and magazines, and why sometimes the confusion is not the writer’s fault.
In print
Our first anthology. If you like what the magazine does, this is the part you can put on a shelf.
“Human beings don’t fit cleanly into categories, and we’ve never understood why fiction should.”
T, What We Mean By “Half Genre / Always Lit”
Newsletter
One email when a new issue lands. Nothing else.
