Submissions

Problem Child Magazine is a Penn State literary magazine that publishes poetry, short prose, and art.

I want to submit!

How wonderful! Email your submission to our current editor, Kyle Carozza, at editor@problemchildmag.com. Don’t forget to include your name!
Art? We accept photographs & scanned art, though at the moment we only publish in black & white. Hopefully that’ll change shortly!
Poetry? There are no hard and fast rules for the poetry we accept. Insider’s tip – we strongly dislike centered poetry. Of course, that could change if it’s centered for a brilliant reason.
Prose? We ask that you keep your prose to 1,000 words at most, though we’ve published pieces that are wonderful & a bit over the limit.

How do you decide if I get in?

We pride ourselves on considering each submission at length, discussing lines we love, potential deeper meanings, or where the piece falls just short of our expectations. We also like to hold a poem on its side to see if it makes a groovy shape. Each staff member gives each submission a number from 1 – 10, and at the end of the semester we average all the scores for all the pieces. The top 50 (give or take) make it in!

How do I know if I made it?

We’ll email you around the end of the academic semester in which you submitted to let you know. The fall semester  ends in December and the spring semester tends to ends in May.