Founded in 1980, the Pinch is a literary magazine run by the graduate students and faculty of the University of Memphis. We publish two print issues each year and our website regularly features prose and poetry in PJO, our online sister publication.

Our name derives from a community of immigrants who settled on the outskirts of downtown Memphis. Like us, they were a scrappy bunch who took the insult about their starving “pinched guts” and turned it around—learning not only how to make do in a pinch, but to thrive. Memphis is a city of intersections on the edge of the storied Mississippi River. We’re a commuter school in the middle of one of the few majority-black cities in America. We publish work by writers who are starving for literary community, for recognition, and for a way in.

Prior to 2005, the Pinch was published as River City and the Memphis State Review.

Because we are dedicated to publishing emerging writers who are engaged in work that is diametric, eclectic, and kinetic, we focus our efforts on finding such work in the submittable portal.

We are especially thrilled to be the place where writers find their first-ever publications. Many of our authors have been included in the annual Pushcart anthology, including most recently Whitney Collins for “The Entertainer'“ (2020), Naira Kuzmich for “My Father Recycles” (2021) and Tyler Sones for “Memorials” (2023).

Previous Pushcart anthology reprints include “Touch” in 2014, “8x8” in 2013. Other national anthology publications include “The Street of the House of the Sun” in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012, “How to Work a Locker Room” Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009 and “Solipsism” in Best American Essays in 2008.

"Mirror Box" by Hunter Choate's story published in issue 36.1 was listed as a Distinguished Story in The Best American Short Stories 2017.

Hang out with us on twitter @pinchjournal, or scroll our instagram feed @thepinchjournal.