About
Hunger Mountain is created by the faculty and students in the Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
The editors share VCFA’s belief that the arts are central to the human experience and have the ability not only to reflect reality but also to create it. Our masthead changes annually, and our revolving list of faculty editors and contest judges reach into their diverse literary communities to help make them part of ours. This allows for aesthetic flexibility, guided by our steady ethics: promoting voices that have gone unheard, expanding our representation and scope,and critically examining our contemporary culture and our field.
We value vulnerability, adventure, and accessibility. Our student readers are the future of the literary world, and all of us take great pride in discovering new voices, as well as publishing the freshest work from established artists.
Past contributors to Hunger Mountain include Elizabeth Acevedo, Dilruba Ahmed, Pinckney Benedict, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Destiny O. Birdsong, Robin Black, Ron Carlson, Hayden Carruth, Lucy Corin, Kwame Dawes, Matthew Dickman, Mark Doty, Rita Dove, Santee Frazier, Terrance Hayes, Robin Hemley, Bob Hicok, Tony Hoagland, Lily Hoang, Pam Houston, Major Jackson, W. Todd Kaneko, Maxine Kumin, Dorianne Laux, Kelly Link, Robert Lopez, Sidney Lea, Michael Martone, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Naomi Shihab Nye, Gregory Orr, Ann Pancake, Carl Phillips, Jordy Rosenberg, Tomaž Šalamun, Charles Simic, Jake Skeets, Patricia Smith, James Tate, Paul Tran, Jean Valentine, L. Lamar Wilson, Tiphanie Yanique, and many others.
Hunger Mountain was started in 2002 by founding editor Caroline Mercurio Spitzer through a generous donation from a Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing alumnx. The journal has since thrived with the assistance of MFA in Writing faculty and ongoing support from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, VCFA alumnx, subscribers and friends. Miciah Bay Gault served as editor in chief from 2009-2018. Erin Stalcup served as editor in chief from 2018-2021, and the journal is now run by faculty and students in VCFA’s MFA in Writing Program with faculty member Adam McOmber as editor in chief.
Adam McOmber
Editor in Chief & Fiction Editor
Adam McOmber 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). His new collection of queer flash and experimental fiction, Fantasy Kit, will be published by Black Lawrence Press in June 2022. He is currently working on a queer erotic revision of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles that will be published by Lethe Press in digital monthly installments starting in September 2021.
His work has been included in The Year’s Best Speculative Gay Fiction and Best Microfiction and shortlisted for Best American Fantasy and Best Horror of the Year. His stories have appeared recently in Conjunctions, Kenyon Review, Fairy Tale Review, and Diagram. Adam is editor-in-chief of Hunger Mountain Review at VCFA.
Adam is an Ohio native, now residing in Los Angeles. He teaches in the Writing program at University of California Los Angeles and in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is on the faculty of the VCFA Novel Retreat and serves as one of its manuscript mentors.
Hasanthika Sirisena
Creative Non-Fiction Editor
Hasanthika Sirisena’s work has been anthologized in This is the Place (Seal Press, 2017), in Every Day People: The Color of Life (Atria Books, 2018), and has been named notable by Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. Hasanthika is faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts and Susquehanna University and serves as a prose editor at Tupelo Books.
Their short story collection The Other One won the Juniper Prize and was released in 2016 by the University of Massachusetts Press. Their essay collection Dark Tourist (Mad Creek Books 2021) won the Gournay Prize and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.
Nance Van Winckel
Poetry Editor
Nance Van Winckel is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently The Many Beds of Martha Washington (Pacific Northwest Poetry Series/Lynx House Press, 2021). She's also published a book of visual poems (Book of No Ledge) with Pleiades Press (2016), five books of fiction, including Ever Yrs, a novel in the form of a scrapbook (Twisted Road Publications, 2014), and a memoir entitled Sister Zero (Slant Books, 2022). The recipient of two NEA fellowships, the Washington State Book Award, a Paterson Fiction Prize, Poetry Society of America's Gordon Barber Poetry Award, a Christopher Isherwood Fiction Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes, Nance teaches in Vermont College’s MFA Program and lives in Spokane, Washington. Her author website is beloe. Her visual poetry website is http://photoemsbynancevanwinckel.zenfolio.com
Montserrat Andrée Carty
Interviews Editor
Montserrat Andrée Carty is a Spanish-American writer, photographer, and the Interviews Editor for Hunger Mountain. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is working on her first book. Find her online at www.montseandree.com.
Kurtiss Limbrick
Co-Managing Editor
Kurtiss Limbrick is a poet born in Sugar Grove, Illinois, and grown all over the country. Kurt loves mustard slathered hotdogs, sunny days, swimming spots and soft breezes. They received their Bachelor's in Creative Writing at ASU, and are an MFA candidate at VCFA. Currently, they live in Portland, Oregon.
Vern Holland
Co-Managing Editor & Associate Fiction Editor
Vern Holland is a queer & trans writer based near Raleigh, North Carolina. They received their MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and BA in English from UNC Asheville. Currently, Vern is an independent bookseller and is Co-Managing Editor of Hunger Mountain Review. Their stories often explore intimacy, fatness, genderfuckery, and grief. If you’re looking for Vern, just look into the nearest mirror and say their name three times, or follow their Substack “Writing Feral.”
Todd Poremba
Managing Copy Editor
Todd Poremba works in technology in Seattle, Washington. He earned an
MFA in fiction writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.