Voted one of the “Best Online Literary Magazines of 2024”, miniMAG lets OSP loose on Issue 198

Intense. Short. Weekly.

That’s how miniMAG describes itself. A short, intense, and weekly literary magazine specializing in short-form poetry, flash fiction, and flash non-fiction that you can rely on to offer a giddy mix of unpredictability and variety. 

Voted one of the Best Online Literary Magazines of 2024, with each issue miniMAG serves up a potent deployment of text and image, a real seed bomb of words and color. A welcome arrival in my inbox for some time now, I loved the concept right from the start. 

There’s something for all tastes in miniMAG, whether it’s punchy, wacky short stories or surrealist poems, intriguing essays or wild flights of fancy, graphic art or pictures drawn with big, thick crayons, delicate line art or great booming splashes of color… miniMAG has it all, set into a slick template that remains reassuringly the same: black pages, white type.

When Alex, miniMAG’s editor, agreed to let Old Scratch Press produce an issue, I was stoked. And it was great fun seeing it all come together. At 30 pages, it’s a little longer than usual, but hopefully just as intense.

And just as multifaceted, seeing as all ten OSP members contributed work:

Robert Fleming supplies much of the art (some of it ICE-themed), including two visual poems. OSP’s newest member, Beatriz Fernandez, contributes two poems and a photo. That most Neapolitan of Californians, Alan Bern, presents two photo-poems, while Virginia Watts provides two poems and a flash-fiction piece titled “War”. Dianne Pearce gives us a taste of what to look forward to from her upcoming poetry collection, “In The Cancer Cafeteria”, with a poem, a short story, and two collages. Gabby Gilliam is also here with a piece called “Reawakening”, while R. David Fulcher turns things spooky with “The Weird of the Water”. Nadja Maril supplies three poems and a photo of the most Napoleonic rooster you’re ever likely to see, while Morgan Golladay brings things to a thoughtful close with her poem “Sky Cast”. As for me, I’ve got two illustrated poems and a piece of flash fiction in there, and a couple of illustrations thrown in to boot.

For a collective work by a short-form collective, I really can’t think of a better vehicle than miniMAG. To read it, visit miniMAG and subscribe, or stop by miniMAG Press While you’re at it, recommend it to some of your friends, or all your friends! And also come visit the OSP members’ Subs too! And if you have a Substack yourself, let us know so we can drop by. 

So, a special thank you to Alex at miniMAG for letting us take on Issue 198. It was a real pleasure, and I hope you’ll have us back in the not-so-distant future!