Great literature and art teaches us humanity. It can help us come to know ourselves more fully, and to cross the many divides that test our spirits and communities. Speaking of divides: Modern America is riddled with them. So many parts of our nation aren’t on speaking terms, leaving one another at risk of disappearing into radio static.

Take for example that old beast, the rural-urban divide. The mainstream American imagination believes in a false countryside, one too white, conservative, or just plain quiet for any queer or Black or brown person to feel at home. But we are out there, holding down the countryside. Even as we live in the face of constant erasure, we live creatively, infectiously.

Mount Island is the first literary magazine dedicated to rural LGBTQ+ and POC writers and artists. We’re creating space for these voices to be heard on their own terms and find solidarity in community. Mount Island is a magazine by us, of us, and for anybody who wants to see rural America for all it really is.

Starting this fall, we’ll publish quarterly digital issues and an annual themed print edition, and we’ll host a variety of public events around our home base of Brattleboro, Vermont.

Our first issue lands in October, when we’ll also throw a special game show-style launch party as part of the 2019 Brattleboro Literary Festival. Limited edition broadsides of select poetry and prose from our inaugural issue will be available for purchase thanks to May Day Studio, a custom letterpress studio and bindery in Montpelier, Vermont.

At our launch party on Saturday, October 19th in Brattleboro, you’ll join Mount Island staff and contributors, a slew of brassy locals, and Brattleboro Lit Fest-goers from around the world in an original game we call Touché! A Tournament of Words. Five contestants will claw through a series of word games for the grand prize awarded by our panel of judges: musician Donald Mutebi and authors Frances Cannon and GennaRose Nethercott.

Learn more about our October launch party on our website.

We need $3000 to fuel our launch this fall. Your donation will help pay for crucial expenses including:

View our expense budget for more details on what we need to operate and how your donation will help us.

All donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. Through our fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas, we can accept online donations of up to $20,000, and donations of any amount via check.

Donations by check must be made out to FRACTURED ATLAS, with MOUNT ISLAND written in the memo line, and sent to us at our address:

Mount Island
118 Elliot Street
Brattleboro, Vermont 05301

We are an all-volunteer, majority LGBTQ+ and POC team. Like our contributors, some of us were born in rural America, others of us have come to it by choice.

The team:

Our fall launch is in fact a revival. Founded in 2014 by Desmond Peeples the original /Mount Island/ released three print and digital issues before going on hiatus in 2015. Back then /Mount Island/ was like most literary magazines—a very general editorial focus, run by young writers as a crash-course in independent publishing. We published over 40 writers, artists, and musicians including Jamie Mortara, Cassandra de Alba, Bobby DiTrani, Maria Pugnetti, Steve Jr., Monique Quintana, and more. Digital editions of the original 2014-2015 issues are available for free download on our website. Click here to view our online archive.

Issue 3 of the original Mount Island

In the years since then a movement for diversity and inclusion in the publishing industry has gained traction, but reports show publishing is still overwhelmingly white, cis-heteronormative, and urban. The need for mission-driven publishers grounded in equity and community-building has never been greater. So at the start of this summer, Desmond floated the idea of reviving Mount Island with a new editorial mission, and the response was a resounding “darn tootin'!”