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.
Stories (236)
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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 Team6 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 Team7 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 Team7 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 Team7 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 Team8 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 Team8 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 Team8 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 Team8 months ago in Resources
SWS: Light Breaks Water Challenge Winners
Welcome back to the Summer Writing Series, and to our first poetry challenge winners announcement of the season. For this challenge, we asked you to write like sunlight touching the surface. To find the stillness before the ripple, the moment where something shifts without warning.
By Vocal Curation Team9 months ago in Resources
I Wrote This Challenge Winners
It takes a different kind of bravery to tell your story out loud. For this challenge, we asked you to write something only you could say, and then actually say it, with your voice, on camera. And you delivered with truth, courage, and unforgettable moments.
By Vocal Curation Team9 months ago in Resources
I Didn’t Say That Out Loud Challenge Winners
You don’t always realize how much you’re holding in until the words start to come out. For this challenge, we asked you to write the things you don’t say out loud, and the response was overwhelming. These poems unearth fears, held-back anger, complicated love, and the kind of honesty that doesn’t always fit into conversation.
By Vocal Curation Team10 months ago in Resources
