The Bent Pine

The Bent Pine is a full color, hardcopy journal that seeks to illuminate the creative talents of students, staff, and faculty across Central Lakes College (Staples, Brainerd, and Online). We are an outlet for any shy artist, developing writer, or proud poet. We want to emphasize and publish your creative work, which deserves a professional and public outlet like The Bent Pine. It will be published every spring.

There is a Bent Pine Journal club devoted to putting out this journal yearly, including students across a wide range of disciplines. These students do all the work, with some help from faculty and staff. This includes getting submissions, selecting submissions (blind), promoting the club/journal, and planning and hosting the spring release event. Bent Pine won 2^nd place nationally in 2023 for its 4^th volume from the Community College Humanities Association. We also received regional awards prior to this national recognition: 2^nd (2020), 1^st (2021), and 3^rd (2022) for the 11-state central division of CCHA. Congratulations to all of the students in Bent Pine Journal Club and to all of our published writers and artists!

We will publish a select number of pieces of writing and art for each annual issue through a blind selection process. We will contact everyone who submits work by the end of March.

The Bent Pine will be published toward the end of spring semester, and there will be an event to showcase student work at that time—including a reading, art talk, awards, and art slideshow.

• 1) poetry, 2) short fiction/drama/screenplays, and 3) nonfiction essays or essayettes
• Students/staff/faculty may submit in one or more of these three categories
• Students/staff/faculty may submit up to 5 single-spaced, 12-point font, Times New Roman pages in each of these three categories (for poetry, 1 poem per page)
• Names must be removed from all pieces
• Documents should be submitted as .doc, .docx, .txt, or .rtf. (no PDFs)
• Documents should be proofread/edited prior to submission
• Each different writing piece should be submitted separately

• Photography, painting, drawing, printmaking, illustration, ceramics, sculpture (including woods & metals), graphic design, and other
• Students/staff/faculty may submit in more than one category
• Students/staff/faculty may submit up to 10 art pieces total
• If possible, names should be removed from pieces, or blurred (if impossible, that’s okay!)
• Please take a high-quality photo of each piece and submit each separately
• Please ensure that photos have a blank/clean background and capture the whole art piece
• Ideally, photos should be submitted in .jpg, .jpeg, .gif or .png
• Ideally, photos should be submitted with minimum resolution of 300 dpi/ppi
• If you are submitting a 3D artwork and would like more than one image submitted to capture different angles, please submit a separate form for each image, but you may still submit up to 10 different pieces overall
• Each different art piece should be submitted separately

• Your writing and/or art featured in a full color literary and arts publication, the Bent Pine
• An invitation to the spring release party reading/exhibit
• Your writing and/or art featured (possibly) at the spring release party reading/exhibit
• Official publishing experience that you can now include in your resume or portfolio
• $100 awards will be given to 3 selected writing pieces and 3 selected art pieces

The first time you submit, you’ll create a free account using Submittable (see links above!); this great tool will allow you to track your submissions. If you are submitting more than one piece of writing or art or both, you’ll complete the form again for each separate piece.

Please contact club advisor Brandy Lindquist at brandy.lindquist@clcmn.edu with any questions.