Hunger Mountain

Issue 32

Summer 2025

Hunger Mountain is a co-creation of the students, faculty, and alumnx of Vermont College of Fine Arts, together with bold writers from around the world.

We resist easy definition. But one thing’s clear: our tastes are wide-ranging, our vision electric. We’re a lightning rod for the moment, drawing bright, disparate sparks to forge something whole. Each piece was selected with care, yes—but also with gusto. We wanted work that risks something. That scratches at the edge of what literature and art can do.

Inside these pages, you’ll find text, art, text as art, and words that bruise, jolt, unsettle and demand your attention. Welcome to Issue #32.

Jump to a section:

Creative Nonfiction Poetry Fiction
Issues / Issue 32 / Masthead
Editor-in-Chief & Fiction Editor

Adam McOmber

Poetry Editor

Nance Van Winckel

Creative Nonfiction Editor

Chachi Hauser

Managing Co-Editor & Associate Fiction Editor
Jamie Li
Managing Co-Editor & Associate CNF Editor

Brie Goumaz

Associate Managing Editor
Kurtiss Limbrick
Associate Managing Editor
Vern Holland
Cover Artist

Kurtiss Limbrick

Managing Copy Editor

Todd Poremba

Copy Editors

Rachel Kupfer

Melissa LaCross

Jenna Crowder

Kurtiss Limbrick

Staff Readers

Jeanne Provenzano

Elizabeth Hill

Jeremiah O'Malley

Mark Routhier

El Roeg

Miranda Janeschild

Zoe Stark

Rowan Potzler

Liam Spires

Rachel Kupfer

Jesse Albatrosov

Lee Mirkovic

Tracy Clay

Natalie McKay

Jenna Crowder

Aaron Courts

Fiction Creative Nonfiction
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NEWS
ISSUES SUBMIT
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About

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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.

hungermtn@vcfa.edu
36 College Street Montpelier, VT 05602
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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.

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Adam McOmber

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.

Website
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Chachi D. Hauser (She/They) Headshot

Chachi D. Hauser

Nonfiction Editor

Chachi D. Hauser (she/they) is a writer and filmmaker. 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. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her essays have appeared in Lit Hub, Prairie Schooner, swamp pink (formerly Crazyhorse), Hobart, The Writer’s Chronicle, among others.

Chachi is one of the producers of Hollow Tree, a feature documentary about three young women coming of age into a new climate reality in Louisiana, which premiered at the 2022 New Orleans Film Festival (Jury Award, Audience Award). Chachi was selected for the 2019 Sundance Talent Forum, 2019 Southern Producers Lab, 2020 The Gotham Documentary Lab, among others. She graduated with honors in film studies from Wesleyan University and completed her MFA in creative writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Chachi was born in NYC and is now based between New Orleans and Paris. Her writing and filmmaking explore topics of gender, environment, identity, family, and the imagination (personal and collective) with a passion for exploring the wild // fluid // in-between places.

WEBSITE
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Nance VW Headshot

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


WEBSITE
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Montserrat Andrée Carty

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.

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Portrait of Jamie Li

Jamie Li

Managing Editor & Associate Fiction Editor

Jamie Li (she/her) is a San Diego-based fiction writer, product marketer in the technology industry, and MFA candidate at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A VONA/Voices alum, her writing has been published in Slant’d Magazine, Mangoprism, Lit Mag News and other publications.

Website
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Picture of Brie Goumaz sitting at desk with dachshund

Brie Goumaz

Managing Editor & Associate Creative Non-Fiction Editor

Brie is a writer currently calling Missoula, Montana home. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts, focusing on her memoir detailing her travels as a vanlifer. Brie is serving as an Associate Managing Editor for the Hunger Mountain Review.

It would be remiss if we didn't mention the inspiration for most of her writing: Remi, Jaxon, Beans, and Oliver. Without whom, life would be entirely void of meaning.

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