The Motion of Poetic Landscape: An Interview with Sherwin Bitsui

by Bianca Viñas

I place my bag on the chair beside me and the weight gives way, my books and notes spilling everywhere. I kick them aside; it is a minor distraction. The room I’m standing in is auspiciously staring back at me. There is an oblong conference table straddling what could only be described as the 40… Continue reading The Motion of Poetic Landscape: An Interview with Sherwin Bitsui

by Bianca Viñas

Published
Categorized as Interviews

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

[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=”] 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… Continue reading Fathering

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

Avoiding Reality with Erin Moulton

by Lindsey Brownson

Erin Moulton is the author of four YA novels – the most recent being Keepers of the Labyrinth – and serves as editor of the forthcoming anthology Things We Haven’t Said. Her books have been nominated and selected for the Kentucky Bluegrass Master List and the Isinglass Teen Read Award List. Erin also works as teen librarian… Continue reading Avoiding Reality with Erin Moulton

by Lindsey Brownson

Published
Categorized as Interviews

In Conversation with Trinie Dalton: Traveling Geographically and Creatively

by Sarah Leamy

Travel, community, writing, art, and finding ways to combine these passions are consistent themes in my life. I recently met an author from LA who fully embodies this notion of a creative and wandering imagination and I had to find out more. Trinie Dalton is the author of six books including most recently Baby Geisha,… Continue reading In Conversation with Trinie Dalton: Traveling Geographically and Creatively

by Sarah Leamy

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

Visiting with Lin King

by Claire Guyton

In my English class, we were frequently discussing the definition of truth. After reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, our class became obsessed with the idea that there is no absolute truth. When we were assigned to write any short story we liked, I decided to expand on the idea that “truth” is like a […]

Published
Categorized as Interviews

Ruby Thursday

Richard Adams Carey

Single, childless Augustus Cyril St. Clair would have filled both vacancies with the same presumed applicant, would have married David Biffenbaugh’s daughter the moment she touched his shoulder and trailed a finger like a hot wire through the hair on the nape of his neck.

Published
Categorized as Fiction

Night of the Spiders

Sheldon Bellegarde

[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=”] It’s almost midnight but I have got to clean out my bedroom closet. It’s packed with junk and has, like, the most vicious spider problem this side of a radioactive-arachno movie. I’m delving into terror. At least I don’t have… Continue reading Night of the Spiders

Sheldon Bellegarde

Dentist of the Wild West

Deborah Vlock

[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=”] Right while I’m getting my braces, and saliva I can’t swallow is pooling in the back of my mouth, Doc Hallowell tells me about square dancing. “I do it every Saturday with Linda,” he says, “and after we’re done we… Continue reading Dentist of the Wild West

Deborah Vlock

Published
Categorized as Fiction

On Revision: Pulling Up Widows

Pam Houston

One of my primary goals in writing Contents May Have Shifted was to make a book in which each of my sentences worked harder than they ever had before. I was brought up in the post-Raymond Carver school of compression, and I still believe the poets are the real wizards…

Published
Categorized as Craft

Two Poems

Mike Wright

I stumble under sunny-thunder sky. The weather
simply does as it chooses, and we all might
learn some lesson there. I’ve been drinking.

Published
Categorized as Poetry

Last Dog

Claire Burgess

Joel was worried about the dead dog in his trunk. Heat rose off the road in front of him, rippling the air like a photograph warping over a flame—he was beginning to regret his decision to pack the ice inside the trash bag with the dog. In this heat, he knew, the ice would be melting, soaking the fur, and if there’s […]

2017 Contest Winners Are Here

We are thrilled to announce the results of our 2017 contests! With nearly 1,500 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 this fall, right here in Hunger Mountain’s online companion. Thank you to our talented assistant editors… Continue reading 2017 Contest Winners Are Here

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Categorized as News

Announcing Hunger Mountain’s 2018 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:   2018 Guest Prose Editor // Melissa Febos Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017).… Continue reading Announcing Hunger Mountain’s 2018 Guest Editors and Theme

Blackbirds in September: Selected Shorter Poems of Jürgen Becker

by Ian Haight

Becker’s belief in reality, his faith in meaning, and his understanding that meaning can be communicated, has value, and originates in consciousness; are all affirmations of human life. These are ideas worthy of gratitude.

Sympathetic Magic

Annah Browning

This magic is also called the magic of correspondence or contagion — the properties of one thing leaping to another.In folk medicines around the world, it shows up in what has been called the doctrine of signatures…

Oprah, Maslow, and Me
by Amy Emm

Overall First Place, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Literature

We usually go for the middling neighborhoods. We don’t want curving brick driveways, brass knockers, tall clumps of waving grasses, gates, cameras. Nope – we want something riiiiight in the middle.

The Angel Age
by Val Howlett

Young Adult Winner, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Literature

The backstage lights are off. The actors are in shadow, lit only by the faint glow of the house lights onstage. You tunnel around them, trying to keep up with Dani Aguilar, but Cinderella has somehow gotten ahead of you…

Giving In

Rebecca Lawton

So it goes with writing and birding. You try to find a sapsucker, but stumble up on a tiny jewel of a hummingbird. You persist and strive despite a robin showing you the insanity of ignoring results.

DIY—Are You a Real Writer?

Amy Souza

Of all my internal struggles, one I really hate has to do with self-publishing. The true me, the one hiding deep down, has never understood why publishing your own work is seen as controversial, vain, worthy of mockery. The socialized me, the one I fight with regularly, buys into the idea that it’s not a legitimate option for “real” writers.

Published
Categorized as Et Cetera

We Are Pleased to Announce the Judges for Hunger Mountain’s 2017 Literary Prizes

2017 Deadline Extended to March 8th! Click here for guidelines and to enter the contest. The 2017 judges are:  Matt Bell– Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize Joni Tevis – Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize Major Jackson – Ruth Stone Poetry Prize Cynthia Leitich Smith – Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing… Continue reading We Are Pleased to Announce the Judges for Hunger Mountain’s 2017 Literary Prizes

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Categorized as News

We Are Pleased to Announce the Judges for Hunger Mountain’s 2016 Literary Prizes

The judges are:  Janet Burroway- Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize Robert Michael Pyle – Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize Lee Upton – Ruth Stone Poetry Prize Rita Williams-Garcia – Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing Janet Burroway, awarded the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing by the Florida Humanities Council, is… Continue reading We Are Pleased to Announce the Judges for Hunger Mountain’s 2016 Literary Prizes

Isadora’s Sandálias

Robin Heald

“Isa, this package came for you.” Mamãe sets a box in front of my cereal bowl.

“It’s from Vó Ziza,” I say. My granny, Ziza, lives in Brazil, far away from our family in Miami.

Again

Tara Bray

The warbler’s folded in my tongue
like a lemon drop. What joy
it is to trap a festival inside,

Published
Categorized as Poetry

The Hollow Places of the World

Kenneth Garcia

[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 ores of divine providence are everywhere infused, and everywhere to be found. St. Augustine, De Doctrina Cristiana The margins of the world surrounded me—at least in the physical sense—for hundreds of miles in every direction: a no-man’s land of… Continue reading The Hollow Places of the World

Kenneth Garcia

Two Poems

Jessica Goodfellow

In origami the mountain fold
folds down—constructing
an obstacle. The valley fold
folds up: receptacle.
The difference between
structure and stricture,
between paperweight
and wastepaper basket.

Published
Categorized as Poetry

Three Poems

Nancy Eimers

[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 Am Reborn as a Shadow Frog eyes glimmer in water then douse themselves and shiny turtles topple off a log down to the water’s under-black when I step out skin    form    and sun hauled out of layers of… Continue reading Three Poems

Nancy Eimers

Published
Categorized as Poetry

Reeni’s Turn

WAITING Monday April 16th At the barre at Miss Allie’s I lean and dream: onstage alone where the spotlight glows, fears of an audience scatter like stage dust. Music flows through me – it always does like air and blood moving my limbs to dance in ways that push me out so close to the… Continue reading Reeni’s Turn