Need a unique, cheap, nifty Valentine’s Day gift for someone special in your life? How about a poem to charm that girl, guy, roommate, or friend? Problem Child Literary Magazine will be selling original hand-crafted poems and candy February 7-11 at the HUB. Drop by our table to pick up a lovely limerick, a handsome haiku, an anti-Valentine’s anthem, or even a customized poem tailored just right to woo the object of your affection. Poems alone will be $0.25, poems with candy $0.75, and customized poems $1. Don’t miss this chance to add a little poetry to your Valentine’s Day! For more information about Problem Child (to join our club or submit your prose, poetry, art, or photography), check us out at www.problemchildmag.com.

Hey all!

Let me be one of the first to welcome you back for the Spring semester. Hope all of you had a wonderful month without school work, or worry, or problem(children?). But it is now all officially over.

Yes, that’s right. We Problem Children are all officially back, and–after a successful day at the Spring Involvement fair and a wonderful first meeting on Wednesday night–we are all very excited to start this new semester off right. So what can you expect from your favorite Penn State independent literary magazine this spring? Here’s a few highlights of some ideas we have:

- More Submissions! Yes the time is right for sending in that old dusty poem or short story you have sitting in the back of your closet. Send it off in an email to editor@problemchildmag.com and we will consider it for publication.

- Workshops. As part of our effort to bring together a community of writers through our magazine Problem Child will be holding monthly Creative Writing Workshops. More details are on the way. So stay tuned!

- CD/Book Exchanges. A lot of problem children seem to like to listen to music. A lot of us also like to read books. Why not find out what someone else is enjoying by exchanging with a fellow PC’er. Each exchange will happen at one of our future weekly meetings and will be a great chance to either show off your refined/ridiculous musical or literary taste or just get to know someone.

- Fundraisers, collaborations with SOMA (Students Organized for the Multiple Arts), release events, and MUCH MORE!

Sounds pretty exciting, no? Well I hope to see you all at our next meeting: this Wednesday night at 7:30 pm on the third floor of the HUB building. If you’re new we are all going to meet up near the fish tanks on the first floor before heading up. Until then, have a fantastical literary rest of your three-day weekend and don’t forget to submit!

Happy 2011 everyone! I hope all of you have at least one resolution that sounds a bit like “I will submit to Problem Child more often…”

Take care!
Swati

Why a Problem Child release event of course!

Last Thursday we had our first-ever Problem Child Magazine Release event. And it was absolutely fantastic! We had a great turn out, lots of free magazines, free coffee, and readings by some of the Problem Child staff, Toni Jensen, and James Brasfield. Even some great music from a bunch of awesome and talented musicians.

Check out some pictures (courtesy of past member Davey Rockwell) below:

Thanks to everyone who helped in putting together what was Problem Child’s first-ever public event. It was a great opportunity for people to catch a glimpse of the great work and people that make up our magazine, and hopefully will be the start of a wonderful new tradition of events for years to come.

Awesome work guys!

What are you all doing this Thursday evening? If you are one of the cool folks here at Penn State you’ll be joining all of the lovely staff members of Problem Child Magazine for our first ever magazine release event!

We will be showing off not one, not two, but THREE brand-spanking new issues of our literary magazine as well as reading poetry, playing music, and hosting an open mic.

The event is scheduled for this Thursday, December 2nd, at 8:00 pm in the Warring Commons (West Residence Hall Commons) study lounge. It will feature poetry readings by staff members, live music, FREE COFFEE, and special guests James Brasfield and Toni Jensen.

It is also officially an open mic event so anyone is free to attend and read, sing, dance, or perform in any way they so desire. We will be handing out free copies of each of our three new magazines to anyone who would like one. Feel free to stop by and show your support for one of Penn State’s most original literary magazines. It’s not like you were going to study anyway.

Hope you see you there!

Welcome back from wherever you spent your thanksgiving holiday or, if you are still there, have fun enjoying more of those leftovers. While you have been sleeping and eating for a week straight, problem child has been hard at work setting up what is all going to go down this coming week.

But first, the most pressing and exciting news!

I hereby present a list of the top ten rated and submitted pieces that will be featured in this fall’s magazine.

And also a graph of all the scores all nicely arranged.

Pretty cool huh? Looks like again we are pretty reliable in terms of what we rate and how it gets ranked. Remember that only roughly the top 50 pieces will be published in the actual magazine. Look for it soon. Very soon in fact. Like this week.

Congratulations to all the top winning authors! We have had some very good work this semester. More news is on the way. Including an update on our upcoming release event this Thursday Dec 2nd!

Soooooooo here’s the thing.  I think this issue should be gritty without being food porn and also without being disgusting.  Food will be part of the aesthetic, but it shouldn’t be the main course.  I think ideally, we’ll have just enough food for the reader to think, “I could go for a burger,” but not enough that he or she actually goes and gets one.  Also, with diners, there is a certain Americana element present.  I think we should try to convey that feel of longing for the past without using kitschy diner decor.  Definitely don’t want this to feel like Baby’s/Johnny Rockets/Fuddrucker’s, either.  Don’t think Jamie Oliver, don’t think Guy Fieri; think Marco Pierre White.

Also, I like photographs of old people in diners, but we shouldn’t overuse them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/libbymarch/sets/72157623842348600/with/4513240067/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/runneboom/5059432762/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dyxie/4732871987/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/francescaanderson/4455670531/sizes/m/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/padiproductions/3887849064/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Warhol diner – http://www.flickr.com/photos/negative_lense/5009935729/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dyxie/4457438590/in/set-72157623296735536/

Looks pretty cool if you ask me.

So we had our meeting last week and things went quite well once again. Believe it or not it is actually getting a little close to the end of our semester here in the fall. After successfully completing our two “lost” issues from last year (In the process of being printed as we speak!), we have few more weeks and a lot more work to do to make sure we stay on track for this semester.

In terms of this semester’s magazine I may just have a few newsworthy notes for you:

- Theme! At the meeting on Wednesday we decided loosely on our theme for the magazine. After a long and gory battle, the scrabble theme idea seemed to have fallen a bit short while the two final contenders, Anatomy of a Problem Child and the newly re-imagined Diner/Cafe idea, kept on fighting. In the bitter end there could only be one chosen theme. The  group ultimately decided to work on the Diner idea, with Anatomy as a nifty backup plan.

So what will this look like? Some thoughts that were thrown around include bringing out the gritty nature of your average diner. Using close-up pictures of table-tops, napkins, empty plates, leftover food we will  be trying to bring to life what it might feel like to be sitting in a diner reading or writing poetry, literature, etc. I for one think that this could look very cool if we are able to pull it off.

And that brings me to my next point…

-Diner Theme Photo hunt! This theme is asking for a lot. It could be very cool, but we need photos for it to work. That is why we, the problem child staff, are calling on you to bring us photos of diner table tops. We need high-quality pictures of what could be the washed-out backgrounds for each of our pages. Your mission is to go out to eat, take pictures of your table top, and bring them back to us by the end of the week! The grittier the better. Let’s see what we can turn up with.

- Deadlines! Yes, as I mentioned before, things are rapidly coming to a close. Here are a few deadlines posted by our esteemed Editor Swati:

All diner background pictures recieved – 11/4
Backgrounds should be in place – 11/8
Stop accepting submissions – 11/8
Last regular meeting – 11/10
Thanksgiving Break – 11/22- 11/28
Release Event  – 12/3

So you read correctly. We are going to stop accepting submissions on November 8th! That doesn’t leave much time for you to get your stuff in there for consideration. We know you all have some great work to contribute. Go get on it!

Also, due to the close times of the completion for all of our new magazines, we will be having one single release event roughly around the 3rd of December. Stay tuned.

- Dues! Lastly a note to all staff members. We are now requiring due money. This will go to logistical things like printing packets and other small everyday costs for our magazine. But wait there’s more! The good news is that by paying these dues ($10 for the whole year) you also get an awesome t-shirt. If you don’t want a t-shirt then you only have to pay $5. The choice is yours. But I will say we have some really great creative people working on making some awesome t-shirts.

If you have due money Swati will be happy to collect it from you, or if you just want a shirt I’m sure she will be available to get an order set for you. Go ahead and email her at editor@problemchildmag.com

So that is about it.Lots of news mostly because there is a lot of cool stuff going on.

As always  send any COLOR! (or regular!) submissions of poetry, prose, art, or anything you can put onto paper to editor@problemchildmag.com.  (Alternatively, you can submit at problemchildmag.com/submit our website that’s currently under construction.) Please encourage your friends (and anyone you know!) to submit. You do not have to be affiliated with Penn State at all to be published.

See you next week,

- Jim

Things are still looking up for us problem children. A few points of news:

- James Brasfield. Our new faculty advisor, James Brasfield, sat in on the meeting this week. Hopefully we were able to convey just a bit about what we all love about problem child as a group. We were all very happy to have him and know he will be a great help to us in the future, possibly maybe even joining us for a future release event or two…wink wink.

- Last year’s issues. If you weren’t at the meeting this week then you didn’t get to see the beautiful dummies of the issues. Now look who’s missing out…Well let me be the first to tell you they look great! Really beautiful. I will keep you updated on the moment when they come off the presses.

- Themes. We spent a good portion of the meeting voting on not only submissions, but also future theme ideas for this year’s magazines. Although there were a bunch of great ideas, we decided to keep the issue open for just a few more days. If you have any really fantastic ideas for themes of our magazine please email Swati or myself with a brief description AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. We will be happy to consider any proposed themes.

Okay, that’s it. Thanks for listening!

As always email your prose, poetry, photos, or art to editor@problemchildmag.com and we will start the process of processing and dismantling for immediate magazine submission acceptance–(In other words we’ll read it and then talk and think about it!).

See you next week.

- Jim

The flood gates have opened! As of last Thursday Problem Child magazine has been officially funded by the University Park Allocations Committee, a most gracious group of folks, and now things are really heating up.

But wait, there’s more! We not only obtained funding for BOTH last years “lost” magazines, but also for this year’s two magazines IN FULL COLOR! That’s right, you heard me. That’s four whole magazines, and–starting this semester–we will now be publishing our magazines in color, cover to cover, front to back, all pages. WHOOHOOOOOOO!

Okay. Now that my mandatory celebration is over with, let’s get down to business. This means that we are finally in the next stage of Problem Child’s publication process. We have the means, now lets use it. Some important updates:

- Last year’s two magazines are fully completed and will be sent to the printers this week. That means we will be having a special mid-semester release event in only a few weeks. The details are still being worked out as to location and exact time, but there are many cool ideas floating around including a poetry reading and an open mic event including live music. If anyone has any ideas or aspirations to help out contact Sam and she will put you to work. I will keep you up to date with everything as it develops, I promise.

- Themes. Let’s not forget that we are also in the process of collecting submissions to publish for this semester’s magazine. That being said, it is getting to about the time where we should start thinking about potential themes for the magazine. Any ideas are welcome and we will be discussing this at our next meeting.

- Dues. Because we are trying expand what we do with the magazine (ie. through release events, websites, etc) it has been decided that we will be collecting dues starting this semester to cover some of the small operating costs of the magazine. This means that in order to be listed as a staff member on the magazine you’re going to have to pay up.

- On a lighter note, we also now have a new locker in the HUB so we can…uhh…store stuff.

- Last week’s meeting went rather well. We had a very visual packet with lots of good photographs, a little sprinkle of poetry, and the disclosure of a few fellow staff member’s secret writer identities.

We’ve got a lot going on now that we have funding. So lets keep it up. Email your prose, poetry, photos, or art to editor@problemchildmag.com to submit to what may just be the greatest magazine of all time…well at least you know it will be in color now.

That is all. See you next week,

- Jim