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Coming of Age
Share a story about the time or event in your life that changed everything.
Prizes
- First Place:
- $1,000
- Second Place:
- $500
- Third Place:
- $250
Status
CompletedTimeline
Submissions opened
Sep 22, 2021
Submissions closed
Sep 29, 2021 3:59 AM CUT
Results
Oct 05, 2021
Prizes
- First Place:
- $1,000
- Second Place:
- $500
- Third Place:
- $250
Status
CompletedTimeline
Submissions opened
Sep 22, 2021
Submissions closed
Sep 29, 2021 3:59 AM CUT
Results
Oct 05, 2021
About this challenge
This is the final Challenge in our month of nonfiction Challenges, most of which have revolved around a theme we hold very close to our hearts: You!
For this Challenge, we want you to think about some of the greatest protagonists in literature, and then put yourself in that seat. Become the first-person narrator, like Ponyboy Curtis, Jane Eyre, or Holden Caulfield, and tell us about the time or event in your life that would be the crux of your story so far. What was your life like before this event, and what was it like afterwards? Was it a near-death experience? A broken heart? Of course it might not be something bad or traumatizing—whatever it was that changed everything for you, we want to hear that story. There are no specific requirements, other than we want it to be a page-turner... well, whatever the Vocal equivalent of turning pages is, we want it to be that.
This is your moment. Tell us your coming-of-age story.
How to enter
For your story to be eligible, it must be between 600 and 5,000 words and adhere to our Community Guidelines. Stories published on Vocal and entered into the contest up until September 28, 2021, at 11:59 PM EST will be entered for consideration. Official Rules for the Challenge can be found here.
The Coming of Age Challenge is exclusive to Vocal+ members. To learn more and upgrade to Vocal+ visit https://vocal.media/vocal-plus
To be eligible to win the grand prize, second place, or third place prizes, you must be over the age of 13 and residing in a country where Stripe is available at the time of entry. A complete list of countries where Stripe is available can be found here—winners will need to have a Stripe account created and connected in order to receive the prizes. For this reason, entrants located outside of any of these countries will not be eligible to win.
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Challenge resources
Poemosaurus Rex Challenge Winners
Hard to conceive, now, how extraordinary it would have been to find the bones of those terrible lizards in the earth — in a time before humans had conceived of anything other than a Great Chain of Being, a static creation. Yet long after Darwin they still have a hold over us, these creatures which are the ancestors of sparrows and seagulls. All hail the dinosaur! They are at once real and mythic, objects of science and objects of wonder, exhibitions in museums and children’s toys. No wonder Vocal Creators responded with such a variety of work to our Poemosaurus prompt.
Vocal Curation TeamPublished a day ago in ResourcesJust a Minute Challenge Winners
Thanks again to Vocal Creator, Breezy, for suggesting the Just a Minute Challenge — one which you all interpreted in a wonderful variety of ways. Sometimes a minute can feel like an eternity, sometimes it can pass in the blink of an eye… to describe the passing of sixty seconds is no simple matter.
Vocal Curation TeamPublished 24 days ago in ResourcesIn Eclipse Challenge Winners
Creator Dane BH is one of our Vocal stalwarts. We’re so grateful to all of your in our Vocal community, and so thrilled by your achievements. This is the third time Dane has won one of our challenges, and she appears too on our Vocal podcast, Write Here, Write Now — take a listen if you haven’t already. But she’s not our winner because we know her: the subtlety and simplicity of we watched the world go dark. together. is what made it our winner of the In Eclipse challenge, with the grace and ease of its lines and observation. As it happens it also expresses the community spirit that means so much to us.
Vocal Curation TeamPublished 30 days ago in Resources