Vocal Curation Team
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Collaborative, conscious, and committed to content. We're rounding up the best that the Vocal network has to offer.
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FPS: The Sonnet of Shadows Challenge Winners
Welcome to the winners announcement for the second challenge in the Fall Poetry Series. The Sonnet of Shadows was especially tough to judge, so many standout submissions made choosing just a few a real challenge.
By Vocal Curation Team4 months ago in Resources
SWS: The Road Drops Here Challenge Winners
Spooky season may be in full swing, but we still have one more Summer Writing Series Challenge to wrap up. A huge thank you to everyone who participated, we loved reading your poems and stories. We had a blast, and we hope you did too!
By Vocal Curation Team5 months ago in Resources
FPS: Falling Leaves Challenge Winners
Welcome to the first stop in our Fall Poetry Series! How do we judge a haiku? Beyond the rhythm and the 5-7-5 rule, it’s less about counting syllables and more about catching a feeling. Does it paint a clear picture? Make you laugh? Make you stop for a second? The best ones don’t need to be picked apart, they just land softly and stay with you.
By Vocal Curation Team5 months ago in Resources
SWS: The Shape of the Thing Challenge Winners
Welcome to the penultimate winners announcement in the Summer Writing Series! Sometimes it’s not what’s there, but what isn’t, that changes everything. For The Shape of the Thing Challenge, we asked writers to explore the weight of absence. Those shadows, echoes and almosts that still leave a mark. What came back were stories that showed just how real the unreal can feel.
By Vocal Curation Team5 months ago in Resources
SWS: Somewhere Between Here and There Challenge Winners
Some poems show up in the middle of things. You’re halfway through a step, or catching your breath before the next word, and suddenly it all feels clear. That’s exactly where this challenge took us.
By Vocal Curation Team5 months ago in Resources
SWS: Everything Looks Better From Far Away Challenge Winners
From oceanside leave to echoing stage lights, this challenge took us to places that seemed picture-perfect at first glance but carried something heavier underneath. For Everything Looks Better From Far Away, Vocal writers gave us sunsets that didn’t quite soothe, conversations that missed the mark, and homes that felt unfamiliar even after returning. These were stories where beauty sat side by side with tension and where characters stood just outside of where they wanted to be.
By Vocal Curation Team5 months ago in Resources
SWS: This Is How I Remember It Challenge Winners
For This Is How I Remember It, we asked for poems built from memories that stay with us. Vocal writers returned with afternoons that still glow with sunlight and dust, the scent of someone who lingers long after they have gone, and houses filled with both laughter and loss. Some memories came through clear and sharp, others fractured and blurred, but all of them carried a truth that felt undeniable.
By Vocal Curation Team6 months ago in Resources
SWS: Leave the Light On Challenge Winners
For Leave the Light On, we asked for stories that unfold over a single night. Between sunset and sunrise, you gave us rooms thick with memory, countdowns that tightened with every passing second, forests alive with prayer and doubt, and hauntings that refused to stay buried.
By Vocal Curation Team6 months ago in Resources
SWS: Instructions for Disappearing Challenge Winners
For Instructions for Disappearing, we asked for poems written like guides to vanishing. Not recipes or roadmaps, but rituals, whispers, and warnings. You gave us disappearances that were bodily and brutal, quiet and dreamlike, haunting and necessary. Some slipped away gently, others tore themselves out line by line.
By Vocal Curation Team6 months ago in Resources
SWS: The Summer That Wasn’t Challenge Winners
For The Summer That Wasn’t, we asked for stories about the seasons that fell apart before they began. About the summers where nothing went right, or worse, nothing ever really started. You delivered elegies and unravelings, ghost stories and quiet griefs. Stories soaked in nostalgia, shaped by absence, and sharpened by the weight of memory.
By Vocal Curation Team6 months ago in Resources
SWS: Things You Can’t Say Out Loud Challenge Winners
Welcome back to the Summer Writing Series, and to a challenge that asked you to cross a line most of us avoid. For Things You Can’t Say Out Loud, we invited you to give voice to the things that usually stay tucked away. The quiet fears, the buried truths, the words that sting a little too much to say aloud. From quiet reckonings and family tensions to grief, shame, and raw defiance, these poems didn’t hold back, and neither did you.
By Vocal Curation Team7 months ago in Resources
SWS: The Second First Time Challenge Winners
Welcome back to the Summer Writing Series, and to our second fiction challenge winners announcement of the season. For The Second First Time, we asked you to write about what it means to return. To revisit a moment, a place, or a feeling, and find that it’s changed. Or maybe it hasn’t, but you have. From second chances to strange reunions to quiet realizations, you delivered stories full of heart, humor, and surprise.
By Vocal Curation Team7 months ago in Resources
