Nathan Alling Long

2022

This summer The Master’s Review published “Picnic,” my 970 word flash fiction sentence, under their “New Voices” section (they must not have know how old I was!). And Cutleaf printed my story “Leave” around the same time.

In the Spring, I was fortunate to have my story “Before Hand Met Hand” published in the great Canadian speculative journal Lackington’s before it closed press. And the French Press Short Edition, also on hiatus, accepted my flash fiction about early COVID, “Channel Five.”

I was excited that, back in January Electric Lit took my story “Lint” publishing it in their weekly “Commuter”. Also in January, Land Luck Review published my flash piece on “The 80’s.”

Sundog also published two of my stories, “Stray” and “True Tale.” And SUNY Oswego’s journal Subnivean graciously accepted my flash fiction “Francis”.

2021

In Fall, 2021, I was so thrilled that my flash fiction piece about a trans girl, “Summer of Joy” won The Waking Flash Fiction Award, which is part of Ruminate.

Here’s a few recently published stories to give you a sense of what I’ve been up to. ( I’m very thankful to all the journals that have published my work.)

A short story about a pear, or two: “Just to Say,” Vestal, September, 2019. It went on to be included in Best MicroFiction 2020.

A short story about teaching and climate change: “We Are Here,” Breakwater Review, July, 2019

A longer speculative fiction story with a troll: “Everything Merges with the Night,” Speculative City, May 2019

A nihilist meditation story: “Pigeon,” Hawaii Pacific Review, April 2019

 A subliminal story about love and music: “Last Sympathy,” Mud Season Review, January, 2019

 A short story about a man versus a dog: “Ava,” The Tiny Journal, January 2019

A story about two men who find each other in the early 20th century:  “Call Us What You Like,” The Coil,Spring 2018

 A story of a woman and her manifestations: “Portraits of a Woman,” Ilanot Review, February 2018

I’m thrilled that my collection, The Origin of Doubt, was selected for a Lambda Literary Award.

I was one of eight finalists in the Bi Fiction Category (they don’t have a Queer fiction category…yet!).  I feel honored to be among so many great contemporary authors:

Many thanks to Julia MacDonnell for such a lovely review of my collection, The Origin of Doubt:

The Origin of Doubt, Nathan Alling Long’s glorious debut collection of short fictions, is dedicated ‘to those who don’t quite fit in.’ Its fifty stories, some no more than a paragraph long, could serve as a missal for a vast congregation of outcasts and wanderers; angst-ridden adolescents, erotic explorers, and philosophical self-searchers.

These stories – most would be called flash fiction due to their brevity and obsession with ‘moments’ of experience – offer highly nuanced meditations on sexual awakening and its confusions, eternal parent/child conflicts, sibling connections and their opposite, romantic love and its impossibilities — and Long’s stunning imagery weaves them into a radiant mosaic. For The Origin of Doubt is, above all, a contemporary mosaic, a post-modern one, spangled with a pure and at times enthralling take on same sex love and its hetero counterpart, not to mention several other life and death matters.  Its protagonists, passionate and yearning, are so profoundly ‘there’ in their fictive worlds, be they Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, young seekers in a Thai monastery, or any of a score of other possibilities, that they pull the reader in close for an embrace, or, at times, a death grip.  Like all of the best fiction, Long’s stories takes readers places they never planned to go, and surprise them with the unforeseen pleasures to be had after their arrival.

Read the rest of the review at:  http://www.philadelphiastories.org/article/review-of-nathan-alling-longs-the-origin-of-doubt/

Dear All,

I’m excited to announce that my collection of fifty flash fictions, the Origin of Doubt, was released Feb 1, 2018, by Press 53.

Origin of Doubt … represents the best of the genre. Each story is a gem, a glimpse into moments of yearning and unexpected perception, instants that many of us might otherwise miss. They are told to us like secrets, each simple moment a revelation that generates surprise and wonder. Reading them is sheer delight.

Patricia Smith, author of The Year of Needy Girls

Long’s short fiction is brilliant. The stories in The Origin of Doubt are ….accessible in style and replete with nuance, exuding an omniscient wisdom that is profound yet humble. Long has a special knack of presenting an oblique or mundane situation and making it momentous; stylistically, his use of significant detail is sharply effective, and his figurative language rich and resounding with meaning.”

John Parras, author of Fire on Mount Maggiore

Long is a writer of focused and developed gifts, of a fecund imagination, at home in crossing genres as form and content make their evolving demands.  He blurs the lines between flash fictions and prose poems. All of a sudden, genre distinctions start to give way, and what we thought we thought we knew is altered, transformed.

These stories span the gamut from traditional to queer trans-genre forms, marvelous to behold in times like these when political discourses and abuses of language have sunk to unforeseen lows.

Timothy Liu, author of Of Thee I Sing and Don’t Go Back To Sleep

Have heart my writer friends: In the dead of winter, good things can come. For instance, my story “Arctic,” which I wrote in 2002 and had submitted to nearly seventy journals (and which was a finalist for the Glimmer Train very short story award) was finally published this winter in Open Road Review, a co-winner of their fiction award:
Open Road Review

The same story was just released in audio version, recorded by actor Dennis Boutsikaris as an example of what CDM audio studios will do with the winning story of their new Portable Stories Series contest. See contest and scroll down for audio file:
Portable Story Series

The contest is a chance for writers to get their story professionally recorded by professional actors–like with selected shorts–get a cash prize and help charities (readers downloading the files are asked to donate.). Thanks to Open Road Review for choosing “Arctic” and for CDM studios for recording it!

Nathan Alling Long’s stories and essays appear in over fifty journals, including Glimmer Train, Tin House, The Sun, Story Quarterly, Natural Bridge, Crab Orchard Review, Camera Obscura, and Indiana Review. His chapbook is available from Popular Ink Press.  His work also appears on NPR and in a dozen anthologies.

Nathan has taught creative writing and Literature at various institutions, including Middle Tennessee State U., University of Richmond, and Virginia Union University. He currently is an Associate Professor at The Richard Stockton College of NJ, where he teaches creative writing; literature; and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Nathan grew up in a cabin in rural Maryland and studied Literature at the University of Maryland (BA) and Carnegie Mellon (MA); he received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has hiked in the Himalayas, biked along both U.S.  coasts, studied at a Thai monastery, lived on a  commune in Tennessee, and for ten years cooked for a Buddhist meditation retreat in Oregon.

He now lives in the Germantown area of Philadelphia, PA.  His dog Gracie (featured in the “This I Believe” essay found in the “Select Essays” page) passed away 11.11.11.