Just 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.

Congratulations to C J Miller on their first Challenge win with This Surely Is a Dream. This enigmatic tale surges forward in time as the seconds pass, dropping the reader into the present over and over again and hinting at the shadow of violence. Skilfull Miller (who has a nice line from A. S. Byatt on their bio) drops in cultural references, from The Velveteen Rabbit to the music of Marcy Playground. Nicely done.

In second place comes Judah LoVato with another piece in conversation with the creators of the past — Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane. In The Singer So Shy We’re cast forward into the future, in a minute borderland between conflict and peace, the story’s narrator glimpsing real contentment only in the lineaments of a cuckoo clock, “The little scene of the farmhouse, the sound of the hermit thrush and the gentle lull of the ticking.”

For our runners up we’ll give a big hand to Bradley Ramsey, who places for the first time with Once More — a story which seems as if it starts in darkness but walks toward light. We also loved Hannah Moore’s the touch, with its connection to what it can mean to post a story on a site like Vocal! Raine Neal’s The Persistence of Memories flashes back to the past very effectively when two people re-encounter one another unexpectedly. Well done to all our creators — for encouraging us, and each other, to look deeply into every moment life offers.

You can check out the full list of winners HERE and learn about our current challenges below: