What Is miniMAG, and Why Old Scratch Press Is Stepping Into Its Pages?

If you’ve never encountered miniMAG before, it’s a literary space built around immediacy, intensity, and voice.

Known for publishing short, powerful work, miniMAG has created a home for writing that lands quickly and lingers. It’s a platform that embraces experimentation, emerging voices, and pieces that don’t always fit neatly into traditional categories. The emphasis has often been on brevity, but more importantly, on impact.

Which is exactly why it’s such an exciting space for Old Scratch Press to step into.

For this upcoming issue, we’re not curating the work. We are the work.

Old Scratch Press is taking over the issue as contributing writers and artists, bringing a collection that reflects the range of what we do. That includes longer pieces alongside shorter ones, visual work alongside written, and voices that move between forms rather than staying confined to one.

This isn’t about fitting into a format. It’s about expanding it.

You’ll find work that holds tension, work that experiments, work that stretches. You’ll find pieces that are immediate and pieces that take their time. And yes, you’ll find writing that pushes beyond the expectation of what “mini” might suggest, and art as well. Many of us make with words and with other mediums too.

At Old Scratch Press, we care deeply about voice, about risk, and about creating space for work that feels alive on the page. This issue of miniMAG gives us the opportunity to bring that energy into a platform already known for bold, concentrated storytelling, and to widen the lens just a bit while we’re there.

We’re proud to be part of it.

Stay tuned for the release date.

It’s Not Too Late for Gravy

The holiday/end of year issue of INSTANT NOODLES, the issue where we always ask people to try for humor. Do you have what it takes to make us smile?

Submissions for 2025 are open through November 2, 2025.

The Old Scratch Press team asks that all fiction/non-fiction pieces adhere to a word count of 1,000 words or less. 

2025 Themes and Topics

GRAVY is our 2025 winter holiday theme. Give us your best holiday gravy fails, mishaps, ridiculous gravy encounters (any December holiday, from Hannukah, to Solstice, to NYE, etc.) or your best wry work about gravy, in general. The point of the end-of-year issue is always to be light-hearted to downright silly. Submissions for GRAVY are open through NOVEMBER 2, 2025; the issue will publish on DECEMBER 1, 2025. Please CLICK HERE to submit. We’re looking for short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, art, and multi-media.

INSTANT NOODLES is always free to submit to, and free to read. We’re about to announce the pieces that were published that we’re submitting to BEST OF THE NET and PUSHCART, so stay tuned to this station!

Thanks for being an INSTANT NOODLES participant and/or fan! We appreciate you giving indie authors a place to get read!