Our editorial mission is to be pinchy–the word used to describe the ethos underpinning the journal’s print and digital platforms. More broadly, pinchy is the encapsulation of the following aesthetic, ethical, and community standards.

Aesthetic

We publish work that uses form, content, and subtext to dissolve boundaries maintained by traditional publishers. The authors of these innovative texts most often identify as outsiders because their voices are underrepresented in contemporary literature. 

The poetry, fiction, and nonfiction work in our journal experiment across and within those forms. In practice, this means publishing an essay that disguises itself as a pet euthanasia form, a poem that uses font size changes to emphasize the fragility of identity, or a multi-modal short story that incorporates line drawings. 

Given that genre labels are nothing more than a marketing tool, we do not require work to be tethered to realism. Many conventions of genre, such as worldbuilding (which we recently featured in a special section), are the foundation of excellent and interesting writing.

Most of the work we publish uses subtext to address the complexities of human experience across culture, class, race, gender, sexuality, and ability. We often highlight such work, as we did in a recent issue that dedicated a section to work by neurodivergent writers. 

We believe in disrupting the marketing and algorithm bias that steers readers to work that is similar to what they’ve read before. Each issue of Pinch is an escape hatch from the echo chamber of monetized content.

Ethical

Our editorial process is designed to minimize gatekeeping and nepotism. More than ninety percent of the written work we publish is unsolicited. We offer no-cost equity submission periods, and our submission portal stays open year-round. Each submission is evaluated by a minimum of two readers and our contests adhere to the CLMP code of ethics. In an effort to publish more authors, we have expanded the number of publications in our online magazine, PJO.

Community 

The Pinch is managed by the students in the creative writing MFA program at the University of Memphis. We are an underfunded public university in a majority Black city. Our cohort includes international, nontraditional, part-time, and unfunded students. By empowering students to make editorial, management, and marketing decisions, they gain practical, hands-on experience in the literary arts. The only student to receive financial support for their work is our managing editor, which means that everyone else is a volunteer. First and foremost the work we publish must excite and energize our students. They relish the opportunity to impact the larger literary culture and have embraced the Memphis “grit and grind” mentality.

Our community includes our contributors. We’ve become a place where writers start their careers. Since our founding in 1980, we have published early work by Margaret Atwood, Chen Chen, Roxane Gay, Terrance Hayes, Harrison Scott Key, Rae Armantrout, T.C. Boyle, Wanda Coleman, and others. 

To be pinchy is to embrace and uplift the creators, contributors, and readers of the Pinch.