Snow Micro Challenge Winners

We think of snow as cleansing, purifying — but thinking outside the box is never a bad idea. For our Snow Micro challenge, our Grand Prize winner Dane BH conjures up light flurries in her winning entry, Our Tribe. Dirty gray city snow mounds in piles before melting away, an effective but never forced metaphor for a friendship that has thinned and frayed beyond survival. This is a brief masterclass in effective storytelling.

Congratulations too to second-place winner Ellen Stedfeld, who has her first challenge placement for Snowman, a spookily magical tale about a boy and his wintry creation. “Boy, spirit, and winter's magic coincided in that moment,” she writes. It’s the culmination of a “desperate dream”, and very nicely done.

Our runners-up include april’s A Dream of Snow, which takes us into a dystopia where there white stuff may not be what it seems; Why, Why, Why by Hannah Moore wishes to transform rain to snow to mutate grief — it’s a swift, moving meditation. In Joe O’Connor’s Orange in a Storm a vixen hunts for her cubs in swift, shivering suspense. We felt a chill as we read all your entries, your flurries of words that called up hushed and frosty worlds.

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