It seems like only yesterday I sat here, nervously blogging about how I was turning this website into a literary journal. And now, I am very excited to announce that our inaugural issue, ‘One’, is due for release on Monday 23^rd December 2024.

The full issue will be available to read right here on the Penstricken website, however we have also created a paper edition, which will be available to order from Lulu.com. All proceeds from the paper edition will go towards our (frankly formidable) running costs, so if you’re interested in supporting Penstricken, please do consider purchasing a copy.

Everyone who submitted a story/poem/article to us for this issue should have had a response by now, except for a handful of people who requested critiques. We hope to have these completed and sent out in the next few days, we just fell a bit behind schedule having received so many more submissions than we were expecting! If you paid for a critique and still haven’t heard from us in the next couple of weeks, please do send us an e-mail as we don’t want to miss anyone.

Submissions for our second issue, ‘Lines’, will open on 30th December, so keep an eye out for our updated submission guidelines, as we will be making some small adjustments to these to improve our submissions process.