Pinchy in 2023
By Courtney Miller Santo, Editor-in-Chief
Lit Mags have distinct aesthetics. Every fall, as we welcome a new cohort of MFA candidates to campus, we try to answer the question of what it means to be pinchy. I thought it might be useful to share their definitions with our community. We use these definitions to help us pick the best submissions to publish online and in the print journal. Here they are (in no particular order). Let us know which one you think best encapsulates the personality of the Pinch.
Fiction is pinchy when it nods politely at convention but doesn't stop to talk.
A pinchy fiction piece is a literary work that leans toward absurdity and the nontraditional without falling too deeply into the conventions of genre writing.
To be pinchy is to be cutting-edge, to have a creative flair that inches on a contemplative narrative that is either unique, strange (in a good way), or emotionally considered.
What makes a fiction piece pinchy is its ability to tell a story that no one else will tell: digging deep into the weird without being alienating, pressing hard towards the truth of humanity by not shying away from sensitive material, capturing a piece of the world in an otherworldly way.
Pinchy is obscure, deep-thinking, out-reaching, and normal with a sharp twist that grabs your mind and keeps it thinking on the piece long after the cover has been closed.
Pinchy in relation to a work of fiction is the ability for the piece to be daring, thought-provoking, boundary-pushing, and in fact, different from the usual.
I would describe Pinchy as having a bit of quirky realness.
What makes a fiction piece pinchy must surely lie in the delightfully sudden story twists that leave a reader pleased or pining; Or perhaps pinchiness is how sharp, brilliant prose unfurls in the reader's mind and then spreads like a pinch of seasoning in broth.
Pinchiness is a quality in which a narrative utilizes a subversion of a situation, either in a fantastical (in the genre definition, or simply bizarre) manner or a cultural taboo, in order to explore an intimately human emotion or experience at its core.
