Contest News

Announcing the winners of the 2009 Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize!

We’re pleased to announce that the winner of the 2009 Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction prize is Valerie Arvidson from Oakland, California for her essay “Birds Have Eyes.” The winners were selected this year by Robin Hemley, who writes:

I loved “Birds Have Eyes.” That’s hands-down my favorite. Of all the entries, it was the one that demanded to be read. By this I mean that I read it early on and was moved and thought this could be the winner, and then I put it aside and read the others over a week. But my mind kept returning to this one. Then after I finished reading the others I took “Birds Have Eyes” again and headed downstairs to give it another look. I didn’t even make it downstairs. I stopped halfway down the stairs, mesmerized once again by the simple beauty of this piece, and then I sat down on the stairs and by the end, I’m a little embarrassed to say, tears were flowing. I’m not particularly sentimental and this writer isn’t sentimental either. But she knows how to tap into raw grief and lyric beauty all at once and just sucker punch you. I’m still moved by this piece and will be for a long time. I want to read it again.

Valerie Arvidson, author of “Birds Have Eyes” holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College where she received the 2008 Dartmouth College Edward R. Perkins Prize in Literature. She is now working on her second novel that re-imagines her own childhood emotions through the history and fictionalized experiences of her Swedish grandmother. Valerie currently teaches in Oakland, California, and is applying to MFA programs in Writing.

The two runners-up in the Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize are Robert Nigro from Marlton, New Jersey for “Under the Black Flag” and Susan Southard from Tempe, Arizona for “Afterlife.”

Robert Nigro is the founder of Whatever’s Write, a workshop group that serves prose writers in southern New Jersey. Robert has served on the editorial board and as fiction editor for the southern New Jersey arts group AfterImage and worked extensively as a journalist, editor and corporate writer for the last twenty years. He is a graduate of Indiana University, where he majored in broadcasting, and lives in southern New Jersey with his wife and dog.

Susan Southard holds an MFA in Literary Nonfiction from Antioch University/Los Angeles. “Afterlife” is adapted from Nagasaki, a narrative about five survivors of the 1945 Nagasaki atomic bombing. Susan has received three awards to support the completion of this book, including the Arizona Commission on the Arts 2008 Individual Artist Project Grant and a grant from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She is the founder and artistic director of Essential Theatre, and teaches creative writing for incarcerated women in a federal prison outside Phoenix.

Finalists for this year’s prize are:
• Anne Dimock from Kalaheo, Hawaii for “Trouble the Water”
• Rebecca Foust from Ross, California for “Beach Plum Jelly”
• Josh Gidding from Huntington Station, New York for “The Vanished Language”
• Michelle Lanzoni from Norwood, Massachusetts for “Absolute”
• Jo Page from Niskayuna, New York for “Making Love”
• Dana Salvador from Albuquerque, New Mexico for “In Migration”
• Penelope Schwartz Robinson from Cape Elizabeth, Maine for “Captains”

Congratulations to Valerie, Robert, Susan, and all the finalists!

Hunger Mountain announces the winners of the 2009 Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize!–October 2009

This year’s first place winner is Tricia Springstubb from Cleveland Heights, OH. Her short story “Levitiation” won top honors in the Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize judged by Andre Dubus III. Tricia also won honorable mention in the Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing for a picture book manusript called “No Mistake.” Tricia’s first place story “Levitation” will appear in this year’s print issue of Hunger Mountain. Click here to read an interview with this talented and versatile writer.

Patricia Grace King from Chicago, Illinois has received an honorable mention for her short story “A Luck that Will Save Her.”

 

Natalie Serber from Portland, Oregon has recieved an honorable mention for her short story “Shout Her Lovely Name.”

 

The finalists for the 2009 Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize are: 

• Jacob M. Appel from New York, New York for “The Topless Widow of Herkimer Street”
• Ellen Prentiss Campbell from Rockville, Maryland for “Chinese Vermilion”
• Timothy Crandle from Santa Clara, California for “University Hospital”
• Margarite Landry from Southborough, Massachusetts for “Midnight”
• Robin MacArthur from Marlboro, Vermont for “The Heart of the Woods”
• Marylee MacDonald from Tempe, Arizona for “Finding Peter”
• Ruth Knafo Setton from Allentown, Pennsylvania for “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”

Hunger Mountain announces the winners of the first Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing!–September 2009

Liz Cook from Roslindale, Massachusetts has taken first place in the Katherine Paterson Prize for her YA short story “Crazy Cat.” This winning short story will be published first in Hunger Mountain’s print issue, due out in November. To subscribe, click here.

Susan Hill Long of Portland, Oregon has received an honorable mention for her middle grade novel excerpt “Tornado,” which “explores the hopes and hardships of sensitive, thirteen-year-old Clem, heartsick at having to follow his father’s footsteps deep underground to work the lead mines of the Southeastern Missouri Lead Belt.”

Emily Jiang of Palo Alto, California has also won an honorable mention for her young adult novel excerpt “Paper Daughter,” which begins on August 12, 1940 when “sixteen-year-old Jing-Mei must lie through her final Angel Island interrogation before escorting her two cousins to America.”

And Tricia Springstubb has received an honorable mention for her story for young children “No Mistake,” “an original folk tale that takes a larger kinder view of messing up…”

 

The competition was fierce, and our first place winner and three honorable mentions should be proud! In addition, our finalists deserve to be recognized:

• Jessica Storey Dils from Westport, NY for “Maisie’s Hand-Me-Downs”—picture book/writing for young children
• Victoria Griffith from Boston, MA for “Last Stand in the Amazon”—picture book/writing for young children
• Sarah Harwell from Syracuse, NY for “Aphra and the Evil (???) Dust Bunnies”—middle grade novel excerpt
• Tracy Holczer from La Crescenta, CA for “Fly”—middle grade novel excerpt
• Marsha McGregor from Hudson, OH for “Second Chance Soda”—middle grade novel excerpt
• Katie Quirk from Davis, CA for “Leaving Lawanima” –middle grade novel excerpt 
• Zu Vincent from Forest Ranch, CA for “Gliding Home”—middle grade novel excerpt
• Kevin Waltman from Coker, AL for “Solitaire”—YA novel excerpt
• Zarle K. Williams from Kennesaw, GA for “Voice of God: The Memoirs of Joan of Arc”—middle grade novel excerpt

If you’d like to be the first to read “Crazy Cat” by Liz Cook, the winner of the first Katherine Paterson Prize, subscribe now to our print journal, and Hunger Mountain will be delivered to your door. For subscription options, click here. A “Crazy Cat” teaser is posted on our homepage.

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Hunger Mountain is pleased to announce the winnners of the 2009 Ruth Stone Poetry Prize. The first place winner is David Cooke from Lake Oswego, Oregon for his poem “Edges.”  Honorable mentions go to Ravi Shankar of New Britain, Connecticut for his poem “Falsifiability” and Georganna Millman of Big Indian, New York for her poem “Hearing Voices.”  Winners were selected by Major Jackson.

Hunger Mountain is also pleased to announce the winners of the 2008 Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize. The first place winner is Diane Glancy from Shawnee Mission, Kansas for her essay “Discourses on Paper Dolls.”  Honorable mentions go to Judy Copeland from Pomona, New Jersey for “Louisville, 1953″ and Kali Meister from Knoxville, Tennessee for “Seven Vignettes About Rats.” Winners were chosen by Nick Flynn.
 

Upcoming Deadlines:

September 10, 2009: Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize! The 2009 Creative nonfiction prize will be judged by Robin Hemley.

December 10, 2009: Ruth Stone Poetry Prize! The 2010 Ruth Stone Poetry Prize will be judged by Matthew Dickman.

For guidelines, click here.