The editorial staff of Penumbra is pleased to announce the annual call for poetry chapbook proposals. The term “chapbook” emerged in seventeenth-century England, when itinerant peddlers, or “chapmen,” sold small pamphlets filled with ballads, lyrical tales, and miscellaneous bits of popular literature. The “chap-” in “chapbook” derives from an Old English word meaning “cheap,” reflecting the accessibility of these books to the newly literate population who were eager to read and willing to fork over what little money they had to own one. Nowadays, chapbooks are typically produced by emerging poets entering the literary marketplace. They are short, ranging from 18-36 pages in length, and tend to focus on a particular theme or explore a resonant idea, motif, or set of images. Chapbook poets for Penumbra collaborate with students from Stan State’s Art and Graphic Design programs to produce original cover art, and the result is a beautifully crafted book of poetry produced and printed by Penumbra Press. We hope to gather a variety of submissions from poets of all backgrounds and levels of experience. Even if you’ve never published a poem before, we are eager for the opportunity to consider your work! We ask that you provide a sampling of your poetry and a brief prose synopsis of the projected contents of the collection to follow. The poems featured in your chapbook submission should be original and unpublished. We will accept proposals from July 17th until August 19th. Finalists will be contacted by August 26th and completed chapbooks will be due by September 23rd. To propose a chapbook, follow these steps: 

· Review the manuscript guidelines on the Penumbra website

· On Submittable, upload a PDF containing 3-5 poems and a 200-300-word proposal for the projected collection that will be built around the poems. In other words, your chapbook should express a unifying theme or concept that is clearly specified in your proposal. The single document containing your poems and your proposal must not exceed seven pages in length. 

· Email us with questions or comments at penumbra@csustan.edu. For examples of some of the past chap books we’ve published, look here.

Call for Submissions 

Penumbra Special Faculty Edition 2026 

Theme:  Teaching Lives   

Teaching is more than a career. It is a way of inhabiting the world—a practice of curiosity, uncertainty, human connection, obsessive self-reflection, and continual becoming. It unfolds in classrooms and labs, studios and stages, libraries and field sites, offices, coffee shops, and hallways, and in the moments that shape both teacher and student, even after a course has ended.   For this special edition, Penumbra, the journal of literature and art at Stanislaus State University, invites members of our faculty to reflect creatively on the theme Teaching Lives. We seek work that explores the textures of teaching: the moments of discovery and doubt, connection and transformation, humor and pain, inspiration, lamentation, failure, and reengagement; the rocky pursuit of knowledge and awareness and the creative products that emerge therefrom. We welcome pieces that consider the craft of teaching, the communities we build, the lives we encounter, and the ways our work continually recalibrates our asymptotic understanding of ourselves and the world.    The theme is meant to be expansive, encompassing classrooms both literal and metaphorical, the visible and invisible labor of teaching, mentorship, scholarship, creativity, service, memory, or imagination, so long as it speaks meaningfully to the experience of teaching and learning.   Faculty may submit one of the following: 

• Up to three poems 
• One short story 
• One creative nonfiction piece 
• One hybrid work
• One one-act play 
• Up to three works of visual art 
• Up to three photographs 

As always, Penumbra is edited and produced by Stanislaus State students, who are honored to read, curate, and present the creative work of the faculty whose teaching inspires the university community. We look forward to sharing this conversation in art and literature with our campus and beyond.   Please adhere to the following guidelines: 

• Each work must be submitted separately as an individual piece (i.e. upload one piece per submission). Those who include multiple pieces in one submission (by uploading 3 poems in one document, for example) will not be considered for inclusion in Penumbra. 
• Poetry: avoid the urge to submit “epic” or narrative poems of several hundred lines. Because of space restrictions in our print journal, we need to keep poems relatively short—between haiku length and 150 lines.  
• Hybrid/Fiction/Non-Fiction: We will not consider individual works in these genres that exceed 1500 words in length. 
• Art: Images must be submitted in jpeg format, with a minimum resolution of 200 dpi.  
• All works must be submitted through Submittable. Again, each work must be    uploaded individually. 
• The deadline for submissions is August 24th, 2026 before midnight. 

  For more information, refer to Penumbra’s submissions guidelines.