Since 1989, Penumbra has published the artistic and literary talents of students and creatives regionally, nationally, and internationally and has strived to be a champion for writers of all ages and backgrounds. As a publication, Penumbra is unique; its student-led staff personally solicits, selects, and edits its content and design. This journal provides its staff with the unique opportunity to gain firsthand experience putting together both an online and print publication featuring fiction, nonfiction, poetry, hybrid, and art pieces. This year Penumbra is excited to share a new opportunity; Penumbra Press, a new branch of the Stanislaus State publication. Through Penumbra Press, we offer poets the chance to have their poems printed as a physical chapbook!

For those interested in this opportunity, the staff at Penumbra Press wants to examine a sampling of your work. We ask that submissions consist of 3 poems minimum and a combined page total of 5 pages maximum. These submissions will represent a larger collection of poetry that, if accepted, will be published as a chapbook. We are especially interested in emerging writers of any age or background. We want to encourage anyone who has not previously had a poetry collection published to submit to Penumbra Press. We ask that the poems featured in your chapbook be original, unpublished poems. We also ask that your poems be constructed around a unifying theme or concept, to be specified in your chapbook proposal.

As a reminder, Penumbra, Penumbraonline.org, and Penumbra Press are committed to curating anti-racist and inclusive content for our readers.We especially welcome work by BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and all communities marginalized by systems of hate and oppression to submit to our publications! We want to highlight and celebrate your work!

Submitted proposals must be in PDF form to be considered (include a 200-300 word synopsis of the direction or vision of the poetry collection as a whole, not to be included in the total page count). We encourage anyone interested in submitting to take a look at our general submission guidelines on our website penumbraonline.org. To be considered for publication, potential authors must submit their PDF, including their poetry and synopsis, to Submittable. Penumbra Press will be considering the first 100 submissions received. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Jarred White at jarredwhite93@gmail.com or Hannah Neeley at hneeley@csustan.edu.

Stanislaus State proudly digitizes current and past issues of Penumbra at https://www.csustan.edu/penumbra for public viewing. Potential reviewers are encouraged to browse the journal’s past and present offerings and note the journal’s diverse range of subject matter and contributors.