Michael Hagen writes fiction shaped by hunger and memory in rural places.

His work blends literary horror and realism, exploring ordinary lives and the quiet forces that draw them toward inheritance, silence, and return. Kitchens, small towns, and family labor recur as intimate, uneasy spaces.

An executive chef for more than twenty-five years, Hagen brings close attention to work, care, and physical detail to his fiction. His story The Girl Who Ate Her Dreams was published in Blood + Honey (March 2026). He is currently at work on a novel set in the fictional town of Cedar Hollow.