a little journal with a big heart

Inch celebrates concision, brevity, and the remarkable work such constraints can inspire. When choosing to submit, writers are asked to consider the size and shape of Inch as it imposes constraints not only the length of pieces, but also the actual length of individual lines (for poets).

Up to 75% of the pieces in your collection may be previously published, but we do require that at least 25% of the pieces be unpublished at the time of acceptance.

Include a title page with your contact information, a table of contents, an acknowledgements page (if needed), and an “about the author” page, none of which will count toward your 10-16 pages of creative work.

Each year, we choose one manuscript from each of our three genres:

Fiction: Flash fiction. Microfiction. Sudden fiction. Call it what you will; Inch loves to see cohesive groupings of short-short fiction. Submit your collection of a minimum of three stories in double-spaced format, 10-16 double-spaced pages in length.

Nonfiction: Our theory is, if life is too short, as most agree it is, you shouldn’t need our full sixteen pages for a single essay. Submit your collection of a minimum of three essays in double-spaced format, 10-16 double-spaced pages in length.

Poetry: We’ve always loved the brevity of poetry. Though we no longer have a line limit, we’re still looking for poems that celebrate compression. Submit your collection with each single-spaced poem beginning on a new page, 10-16 single-spaced pages in length.

To lift up our local literary community, we publish a fourth collection by a North Carolina writer each year:

In the genre tab of our submissions portal, select “Inch submission: NC author microchap (all genres)”

Include the genre of your submission in the title field (i.e. “nonfiction: Solving for X”).

In the comments feature, briefly explain your connection to North Carolina.

You do not need to re-submit your work in one of the three genres above.

We accept electronic submissions through our online submissions manager.  (Please note: this is a new submissions manager, established in 2025.) Submit your work online, and you will be able to log in and check the status of your submission at any time. Because we are an all-volunteer operation, reading times for submissions vary based on the number of manuscripts each volunteer can carefully read while still attending to their day-to-day responsibilities. A minimum of 90 days will pass before we’ve assembled a long list of potential manuscripts to consider. Typically, final results are announced after August 1st.

Simultaneous submissions are just fine, but of course, you gotta promise to withdraw your manuscript if it’s accepted elsewhere.