Hunger Mountain

Actually, we'd really much prefer that you purchase an issue of the magazine, or maybe even subscribe. Great material like you find on this website, and more is inside each issue.

THE STINEHOUR BROADSIDE AWARD

The Stinehour Broadside Award is an annual award honoring a contributor from the previous year’s issues by printing their work on a letterpress broadside. Selections are chosen by a Hunger Mountain Board of Advisors Member and printed by Stinehour Press, an award-winning book press in Lunenburg, Vermont.

Each broadside is letterpress printed in a one-time edition of 100, each signed and numbered by the author.

Each edition will be sold in consecutive numerical order.

Heavyweight, textured papers. Suitable for framing.

$30 each. Shipping included for US residents only; overseas residents will be charged actual shipping charge.

To order, email hungermtn@tui.edu or call 1-800-336-6794 x8633.

To visit the Stinehour Press website, click here.

The first three selections to be featured in the series are:

1. An excerpt from Alice Hoffman’s short story “The Token,” from the Fall 2003 Issue, selected by Bret Lott

Measuring 10x14 inches. The thick, textured paper is suitable for framing. The artwork on the broadside is three feathers, one in a deep red ink, two imprinted by a “blind hit,” meaning no ink was used on the letterpress. This results in a deep indent, clearly visible in person. The feathers are representative of the three women in Hoffman’s story, the daughters being forgotten while the mother becomes consumed with red. Designed by Caroline Mercurio, Editor of Hunger Mountain.

ACTUAL TEXT FROM ALICE HOFFMAN BROADSIDE:

"The Token"

Not long after, my mother found a cardinal. She killed it, then propped up its body with a stick in our yard. This was bad. More red, more blood. When it rained, the bird turned bright as a heart. As night fell, the cardinal's drab partner fluttered around the yard, chirping, hopeless. All at once I saw what my mother was thinking. I saw it as clearly as though it had been written on her forehead with dried blood. If the cardinal's mate died of heartbreak, then my mother would do so as well. She would do away with herself, one way or another. I saw the look in her eye: I saw her red boots and her skirt that had once been dove-colored but was now scarlet. I understood that she might do away with my sister and me as well.

Alice Hoffman

THE STINEHOUR PRESS BROADSIDE AWARD SERIES

This letterpress broadside was printed for the annual Stinehour Broadside Award, honoring a contributor to Hunger Mountain, The Vermont College Journal of Arts & Letters. The selection was chosen by a Board of Advisors Member and printed by The Stinehour Press, an award-winning fine art printer in Lunenburg, Vermont. Hunger Mountain is a literary journal published in April and October by Vermont College/Union Institute & University in Montpelier, Vermont.

Selected by Bret Lott for the 2006 Stinehour Broadside Award, originally printed in the Fall 2003 Issue of Hunger Mountain. Set in Adobe Jenson Pro and printed on Strathmore Americana Cover. Designed by Caroline Mercurio. Excerpt from “The Token” from The Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman. Copyright 2004 by Alice Hoffman. Published by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Printed in April 2006.

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2. Neil Shepard’s poem, “Leap Day,” from the Spring 2004 Issue, selected by Lynn Emanuel

Measuring 10x14 inches. The thick, textured paper is suitable for framing. The ink used is a dark blue. The artwork, a 6-inch tall window looking out on mountains and clouds, is based on a woodprint by Sabra Field called “Early Light.” The window is imprinted by a “blind hit,” meaning no ink was used on the letterpress, resulting in an impression that has no color but is visible by contrast. Designed by Caroline Mercurio, Editor of Hunger Mountain.

ACTUAL TEXT FROM NEIL SHEPARD BROADSIDE:

Leap Day

Perilously close to closing the door
On the season of dolor and stupor.
Perilously close to lethargy’s lease
Date. The contract’s up, the buttercups
Will sashay in. Any day now.
Any day. O what will become
Of winter covers, of slow recoveries
From colds, from cold lovers. Percolating
Whole days. Musing over hot soup. How
Easy to tuck under a comforter or ease
Down by the woodstove, conking at eight
Or nine. Daylight long gone. Bothering
Someone else with its knock and promise
On the southern curve of the world. Perilous
The awakening, the suicide bridge
Thawing for the March leap, the half-asleep
Ones fumbling with their blinds, blinking back
All they have not accomplished, blinking back
At the new slant of light, then leaping and
Aiming—aiming—for that black hole
In the ice that was yesterday coated
Over, silver and shining and wholly closed.

Neil Shepard

THE STINEHOUR PRESS BROADSIDE AWARD SERIES

Selected by Lynn Emanuel for the 2006 Stinehour Broadside Award, originally printed in the Spring 2004 Issue of Hunger Mountain. Set in Garamond and printed on Strathmore Grandee Cover. Designed by Caroline Mercurio; artwork based on a woodcut by Sabra Field copyright 2003. “Leap Day” copyright 2004 Neil Shepard. Printed in April 2006.

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3. David Rivard’s poem “Self Portrait as a Blind Snowy Owl,” from the Spring 2005 Issue, selected by David Wojahn

Measuring 8.5x14 inches with a deckled edge on the entire right side. The ink used is a medium blue. Designed by Paul Hoffmann of The Stinehour Press.

ACTUAL TEXT FROM DAVID RIVARD BROADSIDE:

David Rivard

Self Portrait as a Blind Snowy Owl

Some own it all
under the exclusivity of privilege,
the privilege of privilege a seemingly
infinite capacity not
to recognize itself
or so the story goes
until the Prince comes down
his jaw long & face shaven clean
his cheekbones high
and riding into the city
atop a filigreed royal chariot
Sakyamuni glimpses suffering then
he sees death & injustice
the naked toddlers at play in cesspits
the clusters of gaunt starving elders
menacing moneylenders, sullen slaves
he sees it all then,
and that changes everything,
that changes everything living
or seen by the living
into shared spaces
peopled with cares,
so that a half-century later
long past the hour
when he had first seen
how even kindness connects with fear
his path takes him
by the lawyer’s sloe-eyed daughter,
she who as a result perhaps
of a series of small
shabby acts from third grade
to the nursing home
has been returned
as a blind snowy owl—
and when they talk
he describes to her
others he has met,
cutthroats returned as harbor seals
and nets full of gathered-up thorns reborn
as trim lawns
their sprinklers showering
the naked waistbands of demons,
after which she tells him
she’s happy that she’s blind, she’s happy
she knows his brother’s nickname is “Rabbit”
and she might have been obliged
to eat him
if she could see.

THE STINEHOUR PRESS BROADSIDE AWARD SERIES

Selected by David Wojahn for the 2006 Stinehour Broadside Award, originally printed in the Spring 2005 Issue of Hunger Mountain. Set in Golden Cockerel and Amerigo types and printed on Strathmore Pastelle Cover. Designed by Paul Hoffmann; wood engraving by John Melanson. “Self-Portrait as a Blind Snowy Owl” copyright 2006 by David Rivard, reprinted from Sugartown with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Printed in April 2006.

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Hunger Mountain

www.hungermountain.org - publishing poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, interviews and artwork