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We Welcome Your Submissions
We welcome submissions of stories, poems, creative nonfiction, craft essays, and writing for children/young adults. We also hold four annual contests. Please read the submission guidelines before submitting. We also recommend that you read back issues of Hunger Mountain. Browse our online archives, or order back issues of the print journal.
Call for Submissions
1. Celebrating Sendak
One of children’s literatures finest and most outspoken figures, Maurice Sendak, has died at the age of 83. To celebrate his life and his life’s work, Hunger Mountain is asking illustrators, authors, editors, agents, parents, young readers, teachers and librarians to contribute to a round-up Celebrating Sendak. Please submit anywhere between 50-300 words on any of the topics listed below to be considered for this special round-up. Submissions must be received by May 20th, with the piece to be published in the Children’s Literature section of Hunger Mountain in our upcoming Landscape of Literature issue. As there will be many contributors chosen, in lieu of payment links to contributor websites/blogs will be included in the byline. Thank you for helping to celebrate the man who created such classics as In the Night Kitchen, Where the Wild Things Are, Outside Over There, and many more.
- Impact of Maurice Sendak’s work on your own
- How Maurice Sendak changed your childhood
- Why Maurice Sendak’s work is still read
- Favorite Maurice Sendak book and why
- Favorite child reaction to a Maurice Sendak work
For this special special feature only, submissions may be sent to Bethany Hegedus, CYA Editor of Hunger Mountain, at bahegedus at gmail.com. Please head the email: Celebrating Sendak.
2. Labyrinths
We’re looking for work for our Fall 2012 print issue. The theme of this one is: Labyrinths. Send us your poems, stories, and essays about labyrinths and mazes of all kinds. We interpret our themes creatively, which means we’re looking for work about memory, time, history, the tangles of the human body, connections, dead ends, wrong turns, getting lost, and finding the way out. We think a labyrinth could exist in a city, forest, household, workplace–and a hundred places we haven’t thought of yet. Please read our general submission guidelines so you’ll know things like word limit. All submission should come through our online submissions system, Submittable, or through the mail.
General Submissions: What We’re Looking For
We’re looking for writing with vision, intent, craft, and an ability to transport the viewer/reader into the world of the writer. We accept original, unpublished work. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere.
The easiest way to submit is via our submission manager. We charge a $3.00 fee for all general submissions online. This is not a reading fee; it’s simply meant to cover the administrative and IT costs associated with our online system. We happily waive this fee for current subscribers. We accept .doc, .docx, and .pdf files.
We prefer to receive your submissions online through our system, since our manuscript readers live all over the country and will be reading your manuscript digitally. However, you are also welcome to submit via surface mail. Mail submissions may take longer for us to read, since we need to scan and email each manuscript to staff members. Mail submissions to:
Hunger Mountain
VCFA
36 College Street
Montpelier, VT 05602
Please submit only one general submission at a time.
Fiction
Please submit a double-spaced manuscript, no more than 10,000 words. We look for work that is beautifully crafted and tells a good story, with characters that are alive and kicking, storylines that stay with us long after we’ve finished reading, and sentences that slay us with their precision.
Poetry
Please submit 3-10 poems at a time. All poems should be in one file. We look for poetry that is as much about the world as about the self, that’s an invitation, an opening out, a hand beckoning. We like poems that name or identify something essential that we may have overlooked. We like poetry with acute, precise attention to both content and diction.
Creative Nonfiction
Please submit a double-spaced manuscript no more than 10,000 words. We welcome an array of traditional and experimental work, including, but not limited to, personal, lyrical, and meditative essays, memoirs, collages, rants, and humor. The only requirements are recognition of truth, a unique voice with a firm command of language, and an engaging story with multiple pressure points. We agree with Joy Williams that a “good piece of writing startles the reader back into Life. . . . It can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader’s face.”
YA and Children’s Writing
We accept picture book, middle grade, YA and YA crossover work (text only—for now). We’re looking for polished pieces that entertain, that show the range of adolescent experience, and that are compelling, creative and will appeal to the devoted followers of the kid-lit craft, as well as the child inside us all. No more than 10,000 words, please.
Craft Shorts and Essays
We’re looking for essays (no more than 10,000 words) on the subject of literary craft. We want to know not just that you liked the way an author did something, but why you liked it and how the author made it work. We define craft broadly. Submissions can be about the nuts and bolts of literary writing (e.g., how to write dialogue, how to play with line breaks) or they can consider questions about literary genre, wax lyrical about vision, speak to process, address a hot topic in litcrit. If you’re talking about writing and you’re passionate about what you’re saying, try us. Examples from your own work are acceptable in a pedagogical format, particularly in the before-and-after framework of mastering a new technique. A formal, scholarly approach is fine if that best suits your material, but we particularly appreciate essays that capture the author’s voice and writing style. The essays we’ve published showcase a diverse range of voices, approaches, and subjects—take a look to get an idea of what we like. We’re looking to raise up, not beat down; we are interested in the positive, not the negative. We’re interested in the myriad facets of craft, not in the idea that there is only one way to do something.
Short Category: Under 500 words. Examples: A moment of insight. A sentence in a book that exudes craft. A technique. Take us in and out. A vitamin dose of craft.
We accept submissions all year round
We’ll make our best effort to review a manuscript in four months; however sometimes it takes longer, particularly if you’ve submitted via surface mail. Please understand—we receive a high volume of submissions every month, and it’s important to us that we give every piece our full attention.
Submit to Hunger Mountain: the VCFA Journal of the Arts
