Penumbra is a literary journal at Stan State that features literature and art pieces annually since 1989. It is also an English class offered in the spring, that teaches students how to edit a journal.
The journal editors accept short fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and visual art pieces. Submissions are accepted from Oct. 4, 2018 to Feb. 10, 2019 and range from campus wide to worldwide submissions. Each person can have a maximum of five written entries and five visual entries.
Students in the English 4019 class decide whether or not a submission is worthy to be featured into Penumbra. Penumbra’s Club President, Alejandro Caballero Hurtado (senior, English and Philosophy), said, “Although it’s a class, the students in the class get to make all the decisions… to like the smallest things like font or font size or what kind of paper or what gloss and what we put on the cover.“
He added that Penumbra is “100% student made.”
Hurtado also said the class gets to vote whether a piece is approved. If there is a disagreement, the class will debate and present cases for why something should make the journal. “We are almost like a committee,” Hurtado said.
Penumbra’s student instructor, Dr. Jesse Wolfe, said that anybody can submit to the journal. He added that most of the class doesn’t’ know who submitted what, only the editor-in-chief does, so a student doesn’t have any special advantages.
Work gets published based on how good they are and the amount of submissions that are received, Wolfe said. He added that in some years they haven’t looked to see where the submission originated from while deciding if it should be published or not.
Wolfe takes a very hands-off approach when it comes to Penumbra. He said he only sets the grounds rules of what people must study and breaks ties when it comes to making decisions.
Some students feel more people should be aware of how important a journal like Penumbra can be for Stan State. Penumbra’s Vice President, Johanna Medina (English, TESOL concentration) said, “I feel like [Penumbra] gives authors and artists an outlet to have their work published… some people might not think it is as big of a deal than it actually is.” 
All submissions selected by the Penumbra class will be published in this academic school year’s journal. The annual book launch will be held at the Stan State Art Gallery on Friday, May 3 at 6:30 pm. The reception will be at 6:00 pm. However, the Penumbra gallery will be open from April 29 to May 24 in 2019.
The journal will be put on display for contributors of Penumbra, and copies of the book will be sold at $10. Previous issues of the journal will be sold for $5, and limited edition t-shirts will be available as well. 
All entries are free of charge and will be put into a contest of three categories: (1) Prose (fiction and non-fiction), (2) Poetry and (3) Visual art. The winner of the contest will be awarded a $150 Amazon gift card. The two honorable mentions will each receive a $50 gift card.