Entries by Cammie Finch

2019 Contest Winners Are Here

We are thrilled to announce the results of our 2019 contests! With over 1,200 entries, we had a wonderful time reading and a hard time choosing our finalists. Thank you to everyone who entered. The winning pieces will be published in the forthcoming months, right here on Hunger Mountain Online.  Thank you to our talented assistant […]

Announcing Hunger Mountain’s Theme for Issue 24

Hunger Mountain 24: Patterns We’re excited to announce that the theme for our 2020 print issue, Hunger Mountain #24, is “Patterns.” Patterns can be worn or flown. Bees dance them. Humans walk them daily. Patterns can be mundane or systemic. Tibetan monks make mandalas, then blow them away. Ancient cultures left their trace in how […]

Morphine

Carl Phillips

The long fever of summer looks like broken at last, there’s a coolness that the hours, more and more, leave behind them as they tumbleweed their way to wherever it is finished hours go to. Here, finished isn’t the same as lost, at all, is this true where you are? When I lie down in […]

Meet Our Contributors from “Silence & Power”

You can purchase Hunger Mountain’s Issue 23: Silence & Power (Spring 2019) for $12 or as part of a 2-year subscription.   POETRY Rosebud Ben-Oni: “Efes Wrestling with the Poet Who Won’t Look Away” and “Poet Wrestling with Neutrinos She {Allegedly} Cannot Feel” Recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and […]

Weird Trans Kid

Tyler Friend

Weird Trans Kid’s bladder is the size of a squirrel— not a squirrel’s bladder, but an actual squirrel, a chubby gray one. Weird Trans Kid doesn’t know which restroom to use. Is tired of all mainstream trans politics revolving around restrooms. Thinks restrooms are improperly named. Wants to rename them anxietyrooms. Wants to rename them […]

Marginalia

Ngwah-Mbo Nana Nkweti

There is a crush of Storm Troopers, Men of Steel, and Optimus Primes milling around the cavernous confines of the Javits Center. Surrounded by freaks and geeks, Astrid Atangana wonders how she and her friends—the self-styled Nyanga Girlz—come across to the Comic Con crowd. Mbola, rocking grills and street gear, calling herself “Fly Girl: Superman’s […]

Introducing Our New International Young Writers Prize!

Hunger Mountain is pleased to announce its new International Young Writers Prize! This contest is open to all high school writers from around the world, and all genres of creative writing: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and writing for children. Students in Vermont College of Fine Arts’ MFA Program in Writing & Publishing will judge submissions and choose […]

Announcing Our Guest Judges for the 2019 Hunger Mountain Writing Prizes

2019 Deadline is March 1! Click here for guidelines and to enter the contest. The 2019 judges are: Erika T. Wurth – Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize Elissa Washuta – Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize Monica Brown – Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing Natalie Diaz – Ruth Stone Poetry Prize […]

Congrats to our Notables!

Congrats to Hunger Mountain contributors and editors who have been named notables in Best American Essays 2018, Best American Short Stories 2018, and Best American Poetry 2018: Katherine Schaefer, Notable Essay 2017 for “Edna, with Her Mouth,” published on Hunger Mountain’s website. Brenda Peynado, Distinguished Short Story 2017 for “The Man I Could Be,” published in Hunger Mountain Issue […]

Announcing Hunger Mountain’s 2019 Guest Editors and Theme

We’re beyond excited to announce this year’s guest editors, three writers we’ve long admired. We can’t wait to view Hunger Mountain through their creative lenses. Please help us welcome:   2019 Guest Poetry Editor // Natalie Scenters-Zapico Natalie Scenters-Zapico is a fronteriza from the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, U.S.A., and Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, […]

Review: The Blurry Years by Eleanor Kriseman

by Sarah Leamy

Callie, our narrator, has a keen eye for observation and takes us into her childhood in a tourist-rich yet sleazy Florida, set vividly in the late-seventies and onwards. We begin with her as a six-year-old and end with her leaving on her own at eighteen. Her mother is a forgetful and irresponsible drunk, one who […]

Review: Sugar Land by Tammy Lynne Stoner

by Sarah Leamy

Sugar Land is the story of one hell of a character called Miss Dara. The novel, divided into three sections, is set  in 1920’s Texas, and spans Miss Dara’s whole life. We meet her as a 19-year-old when she falls for her best friend, Rhodie. The attraction is mutual and they spend a few weeks […]

Review: The Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor

by Bianca Viñas

The Binti trilogy resides for me in that corner of the Appalachian Mountains I first picked it up: 14.5 acres of oak trees, milkweed, and a prolific flora only Nnedi Okorafor could bring back to memory with renewed magic and beauty. What I read in her novellas came alive in the landscape. Okarafor, the magnetic […]

Golden Shovel for Trayvon Martin (February 5, 1995 – February 26, 2012)

Angie Vorhies

  after Carol Ann Duffy’s “Prayer”   Dear Audubon Society: I would like to participate in The Great Backyard Bird Count, your annual citizen-science project that tracks the migra- tion and population of native species. I have a few questions: Why only in February? Do dead birds count? What about caged birds? Should I look […]

Fire-Eating Woman

Ama Codjoe

I know tongues of fire as tall as men, autumn sap, red panties, a stack of sparklers lit, riotous laughter, a field of poppies, circus acts. I know mistakes: how fire tastes. I keep a scarlet dress for when day skirts the hill with its hem and ladybugs cover the bedroom ceiling. Tomatoes split like […]

Book Blurb: Fragile Things

by Valentyn Smith

Neil Gaiman doesn’t know this but I’m devastated that the one time I lived as an NYC-expat was when he reigned as Neptunian king at this year’s Mermaid Parade. So, this summer, instead of reveling in my usual Coney Island haunts, I decided to grow a fishtail in my bathtub as I read the short […]

capture

Beth Bachmann

I laid down at your door a white bowl of milkweed houndstongue lupins cape tulips & juniper a garland big enough to kill a thirsty horse I like my peace like flower or fire wild you can bring a horse to water you can force it to swim but you can’t trust what comes after […]

god

Beth Bachmann

don’t call me goddess peace is armed like any man if the ocean is burning oil close your eyes when you come up to breathe lungs float the heart does not the ship is under quarantine often in life there are two choices die or come clean the people do not want an ocean they […]

Review: Bigfoots in Paradise by Doug Lawson

by Sarah Leamy

Doug Lawson’s collection of short stories, Bigfoots in Paradise, is set in and around Santa Cruz, California, between Silicon Valley and the Pacific Ocean. There are eight stories, each about 20-30 pages, and many have been previously published in journals such as Gargoyle, Glimmer Train, and Mississippi Review, amongst others. Doug Lawson writes with confidence, […]

Valentine’s Day: A 14-Point Meditation on Love & Other Fiery Monsters

Sayantani Dasgupta

1. My husband and I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day. If we remember the date, we might splurge on chocolates or a nice meal at a restaurant (usually, breakfast or lunch because dinner reservations for that night must be made five months in advance, which neither of us remembers to do, plus it costs as […]

2018 Contest Winners Are Here

We are thrilled to announce the results of our 2018 contests! With nearly 1,200 entries, we had a wonderful time reading and a hard time choosing our finalists. Thank you to everyone who entered. The winning pieces will be published in the forthcoming months, right here on Hunger Mountain’s online companion. Thank you to our talented assistant […]

Clover

Stephanie Rogers

Heather—his youngest daughter, my sister, his baby, the one who always gave in when he needed money for rent or drugs—left me with her three girls outside McDonald’s, while she drove Dad for a carton of cigs and a Playboy. The girls forced me to play freeze tag. I picked at my fingernails, ripping off […]

On Finding Nourishment and Sanctuaries: An Interview with Maggie Nowinski

by Cameron Finch

Maggie Nowinski (MFAin Visual Art ’07) is an interdisciplinary visual artist, arts educator, and curator who lives and works in Western Massachusetts. Her work frequently exhibits throughout the New England region, as well as nationally. In addition to teaching at Westfield State University and Manchester Community College, Maggie also serves as an Artist-Teacher mentor for […]

Book Blurb: Guardians Angels & Other Monsters

by Paul Daniel Ash

In Guardian Angels & Other Monsters, Daniel H. Wilson’s short story collection invites us to consider the question: How far would you go to provide for your children? “The Executor,” a noir-esque short story, reimagines a hypercapitalist future world in which the descendants of the galaxy’s richest man have fought centuries-long wars over their vast […]

Book Review: Macbeth by Jo Nesbø

by Paul Daniel Ash

To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Hogarth Shakespeare Project began inviting novelists in 2015 to reimagine the Bard’s canon in contemporary works of fiction. A number of writers were contacted, such as Howard Jacobson, Anne Tyler, Margaret Atwood, and Jo Nesbø, a Norwegian author primarily known for his Harry Hole series of […]

Book Blurb: TITLE 13

by Cameron Finch

Michael A. Ferro’s darkly comedic debut novel, TITLE 13, is the story of a missing government census document, a deep and complex relationship with home and family, a man losing himself to alcoholism, and the usual contenders: life, death, and love. It’s also the first documentation of the Midwest’s experience during The Great Recession that […]

Book Blurb: The End We Start From

by Lindsay Gacad

Megan Hunter’s haunting debut novel, The End We Start From, explores a mother’s journey through London underwater. Immediately, the reader is gripped by Hunter’s visceral imagery, as she describes the protagonist, who is preparing to give birth as “a lumbering gorilla with a low-slung belly and suspicious eyes.” Through Hunter’s poetic prose and honest revelations, readers […]

The Wizard

Elizabeth Barnett

Dad, you are not all right. This business of being a cake, the cake left in the rain. These claims and drawings— family trees with great men and without mom. These phantom limbs. You’re sewing the velvet curtain shut. Come out. Say you are just a man.   Art by Maggie Nowinski. Elizabeth Barnett lives in […]

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

Tom Sleigh

1 Everything that’s happening isn’t me doing it, it’s what the cold’s doing, the music’s doing, it’s what gravity’s doing to the guy and if I can’t imagine what it’s like how much less can someone outside the whole situation see it straight on when what somebody else is doing might be worse than what […]

Meet Our Contributors from “Everyday Chimeras”

You can purchase Hunger Mountain’s Issue 22: Everyday Chimeras (Spring 2018) for $12 or as part of a 2-year subscription. POETRY Angie Macri: “Remembrance: Dream, Palace of Drought” Angie Macri is the author of Underwater Panther (Southeast Missouri State University), winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize, and Fear Nothing of the Future or the Past (Finishing Line). Her recent work appears in Poetry, […]

Announcing Our Guest Judges for the 2018 Hunger Mountain Literary Prizes…

2018 Deadline Extended to March 15th! Click here for guidelines and to enter the contest. The 2018 judges are: Caroline Leavitt – Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize Pam Houston – Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize Sherwin Bitsui – Ruth Stone Poetry Prize Kekla Magoon – Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing Caroline […]

Hebron

Myronn Hardy

Green awnings have rusted. Time unstill     you are unstill walking on a street stilled.   Your mind holds the no longer market. You want to show me the market. You have crawled prison floors.   Your son has done the same. You are the same     the ceaselessness. Your mother served green […]

Creek Dippers

Robin MacArthur

“You want to jump in the creek?” my mother asks. It’s a Tuesday night in late July and we’re on the porch drinking Myers’s rum doused with lemonade. She’s wearing cut-off cargo pants and a Grateful Dead T-shirt full of holes; her cracked toenails are the chartreuse of limes.

Hourglass

Julie Marie Wade

As a child in confirmation class, I am instructed in the holy math. “Seven is the number of completion,” our pastor says. “It took seven days for God to make the world, so seven days became the length of our earthly week.” He speaks to us as a single mass, the cloud and not the snowflakes, separate and unique.

Rodrigo Rey Rosa

Rav Grewal-Kök

Rodrigo took Rosa’s clothes out of his closet and laid them on the bed beside her toothbrush, face cream, and paperbacks. He called to say she could come for her things while he was at work. It was almost nine. He was shaved, scented, and ready to leave. “Trust me,” he said, “there’s nothing I […]

Two Poems

Matthew Dickman

Wonderland Anton is marching with his new friends, their shaved heads like tongues of fire floating along 82nd Avenue, the cars at night honking at them like they were vets just home from the war. He is marching with an old lie in his mouth, a lie like a rotten acorn, the acid taste of […]

Fathering

Major Jackson

We enter without tears and huddle in the sidehills. The children’s cries are like spears in our chests, so we trade our silence for hammers. In our sleep, behemoths descend upon us which we cannot shake even when first light flames over the eastern crests. We eat flesh of the great furred beasts and wolf […]

The Man I Could Be

Brenda Peynado

Once, my dad tried to give me the jacket the Army awarded him for serving in Korea. It looked like a varsity jacket, soft blue felt, pale arms. On the back it said, I know I’m going to heaven because I’ve been to hell. I was fifteen, and I thought a lot of my dad, […]

White Knights

Howard Frank Mosher

“The Knights need a teetotaler driver tomorrow, Jimbo,” Harlan Kittredge said. “Be you a teetotaler?” It was the evening of June 20. Tomorrow the White Knights of Temperance, formerly the Kingdom County Outlaws, were headed to Boston to catch the twin bill between the Sox and the Yankees. They’d gotten together tonight at the Common […]

Flash Flood

Alexa Hudson

Mama put a hand to her wide hip, plucked the cigarette from her mouth, and took a long look at Cliff. Pulled her eyeglasses halfway down her nose and said, “No you didn’t.” “Mama, be nice,” I said. It had taken five years and three days for me to build the courage to bring him […]

Shirts and Skins

Brian Evenson

On their first date, a so-called blind one, Megan took Gregory by the hand and he let her. She led him into a space afflicted with mood lighting and for a moment he though it must be a bar, a remarkably empty one, but no, it was not a bar but an art gallery.

The Songs We Know Not to Talk Over

Rosebud Ben-Oni

After a funeral, something wrestles from the wind, Flutters haphazardly close to your aching chest. Most likely it will fall to the cracked sidewalk. Stop walking. Consider it. You won’t understand What you are looking at, this sort of green would-be Katydid with dragonfly wings and limbs like a praying Mantis. It’s incapable of anything […]

Writing Off the Page

Andrea Rothman

I live in the North Shore of Long Island, the setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In theory, the bucolic landscape of sea grass, lush trees, and glittering water that surround me should provide the ideal framework for my fiction writing. But as a mother of seven-year-old twins with a household to manage, […]