Hunger Mountain accepts unsolicited fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid forms during our spring and fall submission periods.
General guidelines: Please submit prose of no more than 5,000 words or up to three flash/hybrid pieces all in one document. For poetry, submit up to five poems all in one file.
Hunger Mountain strives to provide a platform for traditionally silenced voices, and we reserve at least 50% of each issue for unsolicited work.
We welcome simultaneous submissions but ask that if your work is accepted elsewhere, you withdraw it through Submittable as soon as possible.
Current students and faculty in the MFA in Writing Program at VCFA cannot submit to the magazine. Alumnx must wait two years after the date of graduation to submit.
Due to copyright laws, we cannot accept pieces that include song lyrics.
$500 prize for first-place winner in each category. Publication in Hunger Mountain for first-place winners and runner-ups.
Please enter one original, unpublished story under 6,000 words per submission fee. Submissions should be anonymous. Your name or any other information that would allow someone to identify you (email address etc.) should not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Contact information should only be included in the Submittable form. Manuscripts should be submitted double spaced and in 12 point type. This year’s contest is being co-judged by Adam McOmber who is the author of three novels, The White Forest (Touchstone), Jesus and John (Lethe), and The Ghost Finders (JournalStone), as well as two collections of short stories: My House Gathers Desires (BOA) and This New & Poisonous Air (BOA) alongside Brian Leung, author of All I Should Not Tell, World Famous Love Acts, Lost men, and Take me Home, is a past recipient of the Lambda Literary outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize. His forthcoming title is A Terrifying Brush with Optimism: New and Selected (Sarabande, Nov. 2024).
$500 prize for first-place winner in each category. Publication in Hunger Mountain for first-place winners and runner-ups.
Please submit up to three original unpublished poems in one entry (all three poems in one Word document). Submissions should be anonymous. Your name or any other information that would allow someone to identify you (email address etc.) should not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Contact information should only be included in the Submittable form. This year’s judge is Hunger Mountain Poetry Editor, Nance Van Winkel, author of many collections of poetry and novels, including most recently The Many Beds of Martha Washington, Our Foreigner, Ever Yrs, and Boneland.
We ask that you do not include song lyrics or any other copyrighted material in your submissions.
$500 prize for first place winner in each category. Publication in Hunger Mountain for first-place winners and runner-ups.
Please enter one original, unpublished piece of creative nonfiction, no more than 6,000 words. Submissions should be anonymous. Your name or any other information that would allow someone to identify you (email address etc.) should not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Contact information should only be included in the Submittable form. Manuscripts should be submitted double spaced and in 12 point type. This year's judge will be writer and filmmaker Chachi D. Hauser (she/they). Chachi’s debut book, It’s fun to be a person I don’t know was published in March 2023 by the University of Nebraska Press in their American Lives Series.
We ask that you do not include song lyrics or any other copyrighted material in your submissions.