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… Continue reading 2019 Contest Winners Are Here

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Channeling Stories & Creating Patterns: An Interview with Dana Lyons

by Cameron Finch

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#1f4e78′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] Dana Lyons lives and works as a user interface designer in Pittsburgh, PA. Using language, vector graphics, and vibrant colors, her work often explores the intersection of ethical design, technology, and human behavior.  Lyons received her MFA in Graphic Design… Continue reading Channeling Stories & Creating Patterns: An Interview with Dana Lyons

by Cameron Finch

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… Continue reading Announcing Hunger Mountain’s Theme for Issue 24

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Morphine

Carl Phillips

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading Morphine

Carl Phillips

The True Story of La Negra, A Bio-Myth

Elizabeth Acevedo

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] La  Negra  is  a  beastgirl.   From  forehead  to  heel callused. Risen on an island made of shit bricks: an empire.  The  doctor   pulled   La   Negra   from  her mother’s throat:  a swallowed sword:  rosary beads. La… Continue reading The True Story of La Negra, A Bio-Myth

Elizabeth Acevedo

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… Continue reading Meet Our Contributors from “Silence & Power”

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Of Unapologetic Black Women and Melania Trump

Destiny O. Birdsong

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] “And the difference was all the difference there was.” ~ Toni Morrison   I’m hard pressed to say America without sounding like a terrorist. I’m a guest here. I arrived with a few syllables lashed to my back. One of… Continue reading Of Unapologetic Black Women and Melania Trump

Destiny O. Birdsong

Labs, Love, and the Sweet Iron Odor of a Sheared Lawn: An Interview with Andrea Rothman

by Cameron Finch

  A scientist and a writer, Andrea Rothman knows more than a thing or two about smell. She was a postdoctoral fellow and research associate at the Rockefeller University in New York, where she won two individual grants from the National Institute of Health to study the neurobiology of olfaction. She went on to earn… Continue reading Labs, Love, and the Sweet Iron Odor of a Sheared Lawn: An Interview with Andrea Rothman

by Cameron Finch

Weird Trans Kid

Tyler Friend

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading Weird Trans Kid

Tyler Friend

The Jacket

Sasha LaPointe

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#1f4378′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] –an excerpt from her memoir, Little Boats Six years after my name was gifted to me, my parents moved us to the Swinomish Reservation. There was tribal land in the family and my parents saw an opportunity for an easier… Continue reading The Jacket

Sasha LaPointe

Marginalia

Ngwah-Mbo Nana Nkweti

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#33999′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading Marginalia

Ngwah-Mbo Nana Nkweti

Come On, Come Here, Talk to Me

Lydia Conklin

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#372a55′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] Sabrina took a shortcut to the party through the field between the Manor House and the Gehry building. The field was supposed to have ticks but no one at Bard cared. People were scoring crack on trips to Brooklyn, sporting… Continue reading Come On, Come Here, Talk to Me

Lydia Conklin

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… Continue reading Introducing Our New International Young Writers Prize!

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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… Continue reading Announcing Our Guest Judges for the 2019 Hunger Mountain Writing Prizes

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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… Continue reading Congrats to our Notables!

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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,… Continue reading Announcing Hunger Mountain’s 2019 Guest Editors and Theme

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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… Continue reading Review: The Blurry Years by Eleanor Kriseman

by Sarah Leamy

How to Have a Two-Night Stand

Andrea Rogers

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] You will remember how he moved toward you, hazard-handed, uttering your language—that pidgin of the partially recovered self. And you still won’t have learned, although you know the story well, won’t ever catch the flown bird of your breath, remembering… Continue reading How to Have a Two-Night Stand

Andrea Rogers

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… Continue reading Review: The Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor

by Bianca Viñas

From “Negus in Paris”

L. Lamar Wilson

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] I smile at a cop for the first time in years—her skin Of caramel & whey, kissed the way French kiss to say Bonjour, not Je te veux, by a pale woman who, like her, Dons wolves’ flesh, the darkest… Continue reading From “Negus in Paris”

L. Lamar Wilson

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

Angie Vorhies

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”]   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:… Continue reading Golden Shovel for Trayvon Martin (February 5, 1995 – February 26, 2012)

Angie Vorhies

Of Names to Disguise the Dead

Miriam Bird Greenberg

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] For almost forty years I have been alive, and the magnitude of my unknown grows before me, its shape the shadow of an occult creature occluded, eclipsed, unmade by its elder. Certainty shows itself little by little. It is something… Continue reading Of Names to Disguise the Dead

Miriam Bird Greenberg

Of Inheritance

Miriam Bird Greenberg

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”]   Its beneficiaries ordinary in their disgrace, made to break at lathe or lumber mill, they like to say. Fruit bruised before the fall, broken open beneath the tree, they are liquor for wasps and ruined gods, rust-riven and rat-… Continue reading Of Inheritance

Miriam Bird Greenberg

Review: Everyone Wants To Be Ambassador To France by Bryan Hurt

by Sarah Leamy

Wonderfully absurd and weird stories fill this collection by Bryan Hurt. His characters range from astronaut-artists, a British aristocrat with his adopted girls, a goat and seagull questioning the afterlife on the edge of a cliff, and a run-down American writer panicking about the demands of his agents. The opening lines are often so succinct… Continue reading Review: Everyone Wants To Be Ambassador To France by Bryan Hurt

by Sarah Leamy

A Running List of Things Learned Today:

Syreeta McFadden

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#1f4378′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] The songs of birds are call and response. Woodpecker rhythmically answers a hummingbird’s song. Kindness is dropping a leaf onto an earthworm’s back to shield it from sunlight. Quiet is as loud as a bird’s call. Adrienne Rich was haunted… Continue reading A Running List of Things Learned Today:

Syreeta McFadden

Slum Night: An Essay

Hallie Goodman

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#1f4378′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] The Crazy Lady groaned up against the bad side of I-35. It wasn’t much from the outside—a squatty, stucco lump of a strip club, perched perilously close to the interstate edge, its façade ground smooth by relentless traffic grit. This… Continue reading Slum Night: An Essay

Hallie Goodman

Fire-Eating Woman

Ama Codjoe

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading Fire-Eating Woman

Ama Codjoe

I Thought There Would Be More Wolves

Sara Ryan

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] here. at the dumb stroke of midnight. in the glass dome of roses. the woods at the end of the lake. I was taught where to wait patiently. to fold my hands on my lap like two sorry doves. to… Continue reading I Thought There Would Be More Wolves

Sara Ryan

capture

Beth Bachmann

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading capture

Beth Bachmann

god

Beth Bachmann

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading god

Beth Bachmann

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,… Continue reading Review: Bigfoots in Paradise by Doug Lawson

by Sarah Leamy

The Waist That You Are From

Caroll Sun Yang

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#1f4378′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] There’s a Korean word, Han. I looked it up. There is no literal English translation; it’s a state of mind; of soul, really. A sadness. A sadness so deep no tears will come. And yet still, there’s hope. — Josiah… Continue reading The Waist That You Are From

Caroll Sun Yang

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

Sayantani Dasgupta

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#1f4378′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading Valentine’s Day: A 14-Point Meditation on Love & Other Fiery Monsters

Sayantani Dasgupta

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… Continue reading 2018 Contest Winners Are Here

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Clover

Stephanie Rogers

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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.… Continue reading Clover

Stephanie Rogers

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… Continue reading On Finding Nourishment and Sanctuaries: An Interview with Maggie Nowinski

by Cameron Finch

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… Continue reading Book Blurb: Guardians Angels & Other Monsters

by Paul Daniel Ash

Swan Soup

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] My spine is strung together by a string of shattered stars. Neck wrung, I’m a dead swan floating in a moat—an amusement park ride, the fairgrounds abandoned. A stork stands in her nest atop the Ferris wheel, the emerald cascade… Continue reading Swan Soup

Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Conditioning (Run Study)

José Angel Araguz

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] I must run: walking won’t get me there. Miles must take the place of arms; distance, embrace. I must run, until I become air. * Conditioning is a whisper on the eyelash of an eye that doesn’t blink, afraid of… Continue reading Conditioning (Run Study)

José Angel Araguz

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… Continue reading Book Review: Macbeth by Jo Nesbø

by Paul Daniel Ash

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… Continue reading Book Blurb: The End We Start From

by Lindsay Gacad

Objects of Unexpected Beauty

Lara Ehrlich

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#33999′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] My father sits at the kitchen table with his shoulders hunched, staring at a feather cupped in his rough carpenter’s hands. Its barbs are clean and white. The table is bare except for the wooden box still encrusted with dirt.… Continue reading Objects of Unexpected Beauty

Lara Ehrlich

The Antlered Doe

R. Cassandra Bruner

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] A man doused in roebuck piss says I saw it as I skinned its thighs & laughs. Your death always a joke, the shock of womb, a punchline. Darting through the underbrush, even your hooves resounded like cackling children. This… Continue reading The Antlered Doe

R. Cassandra Bruner

Redirect: In Response to Tanya Gill’s “Shared Horizons”

Shelly Oria

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#372a55′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] One thing about fear is that it’s stronger than the average human body. Another thing about fear is that it spreads quickly in large crowds. The Director wants his viewers to keep these facts in mind when watching his film.… Continue reading Redirect: In Response to Tanya Gill’s “Shared Horizons”

Shelly Oria

The Eight Graveyards

Anna Dunn

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] In this garden a draft of summer plays across the prayer flags. A handful of slugs marched into the Worcestershire sauce and drowned themselves last night. The red dog is tired and smells like dirt and air. In this graveyard… Continue reading The Eight Graveyards

Anna Dunn

Remembrance: Dream, Palace of Drought

Angie Macri

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] What you see on the corn is what you’ll get, and the cattle come to the fence in hopes of hay. During seven years of corn, like the sand of the sea, like amber floating, we wore the king’s ring… Continue reading Remembrance: Dream, Palace of Drought

Angie Macri

The Wizard

Elizabeth Barnett

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading The Wizard

Elizabeth Barnett

Honey and Cold Stars

Amy Rose Capetta

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#33999′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] One day Megi asked me how the third faerie war started, and I worried that if I gave the wrong answer, she would devour me. A lot of our friendship was like that. We were sitting on a picnic table… Continue reading Honey and Cold Stars

Amy Rose Capetta

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

Tom Sleigh

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

Tom Sleigh

Published
Categorized as Poetry

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,… Continue reading Meet Our Contributors from “Everyday Chimeras”

Published
Categorized as News

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

Published
Categorized as News

Hebron

Myronn Hardy

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading Hebron

Myronn Hardy

Published
Categorized as Poetry

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.

Published
Categorized as Fiction

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.

An Interview with Sandra Nickel, Maggie Lehrman, & Victoria Wells Arms

by Cameron Finch

“The Stuff Between the Stars“ is a story by Sandra Nickel, which was the Category Winner for Children’s Books in Hunger Mountain’s 2017 Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing. We are most grateful for author Sandra Nickel, editor Maggie Lehrman, and literary agent Victoria Wells Arms for taking the time to chat… Continue reading An Interview with Sandra Nickel, Maggie Lehrman, & Victoria Wells Arms

by Cameron Finch

Published
Categorized as Interviews

Rodrigo Rey Rosa

Rav Grewal-Kök

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#372a55‘ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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.… Continue reading Rodrigo Rey Rosa

Rav Grewal-Kök

Two Poems

Matthew Dickman

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading Two Poems

Matthew Dickman

Published
Categorized as Poetry

Mammy Two-Shoes, Rightful Owner of Tom, Addresses the Lady of the House

Patricia Smith

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] Mammy Two Shoes, a fictional character in MGM’s Tom and Jerry cartoons, was a corpulent, achingly stereotypical black woman, seen only from the knees down. I am double negative charm, carrying the syrupy burden of your love in my yawning… Continue reading Mammy Two-Shoes, Rightful Owner of Tom, Addresses the Lady of the House

Patricia Smith

Published
Categorized as Poetry

Fathering

Major Jackson

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Major Jackson

Published
Categorized as Poetry

The Man I Could Be

Brenda Peynado

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#372a55′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading The Man I Could Be

Brenda Peynado

Published
Categorized as Fiction

White Knights

Howard Frank Mosher

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#372a55′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] “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… Continue reading White Knights

Howard Frank Mosher

Published
Categorized as Fiction

Flash Flood

Alexa Hudson

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#372a55′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading Flash Flood

Alexa Hudson

Published
Categorized as Fiction

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.

Published
Categorized as Fiction

The Songs We Know Not to Talk Over

Rosebud Ben-Oni

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2866′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] 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… Continue reading The Songs We Know Not to Talk Over

Rosebud Ben-Oni

Published
Categorized as Poetry

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,… Continue reading Writing Off the Page

Andrea Rothman

Published
Categorized as Craft