Winners of the Medium Writers Challenge
Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to everyone who submitted!
Medium’s curators, staff, and a host of guest judges have spent hours and hours reading the nearly 10,000 entries in our first-ever Medium Writers Challenge. We challenged creators, new and experienced, to write original essays on four topics: death, reentry, space, and work. The pieces were judged based on creativity, originality, and writing quality.
Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to everyone who entered!
All the winners are listed below. Asterisks indicate the Semi-Finalists for each category.
Grand Prize Winner:
“Keeper of the Place,” by
DEATH
Guest Judges: , , ,
Finalist
“Keeper of the Place,” by
Honorable Mentions
“Barn,” by *
“Death — Italian Style,” by *
“Sky Burial,” by *
“Lessons from Roosters,” by *
“Howl into the Wind,” by *
“These Were Our Years,” by *
“One Stitch at a Time,” by *
“Dead Man’s Bowling Balls,” by *
“How To Keep a Dead Cat In Your Freezer,” by *
“Bittersweet Symphony,” by
“It Was Our Summer of Dying,” by
“Dear Bryan,” by
“A Bone’s Story,” by
“A Slow Voyage of Acceptance,” by
“Daffodils for Dharma,” by
“Beach Day,” by
“Home Birth, Home Death,” by
“The Secret Language,” by
“Man As Deer,” by
“The Mind Does Strange Things When It Accepts That You Going to Die,” by
“A Fate Worse Than Death,” by
“Slayed by Joy,” by
“The Fact that You’re Smiling,” by
“A Perfect Boon,” by
“I Might Have Named Her Lucy,” by
“My Year of Non-Magical Thinking,” by
REENTRY
Guest Judges: , , ,
Finalist
“The Hope That Holds You Back,” by
Honorable Mentions
“Leaving Neonatal: A New Birth,” by *
“Like Icarus,” by *
“How to Make the Turn,” by *
“Going Back was the Beginning,” by *
“Echoes of Love,” by *
“Behind Every Lining Is a Silver Cloud,” by *
“What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes?” by *
“How The Midnight Express Came To Our Rescue During Our Family Reunion,” by *
“The Bruises on My Arms,” by *
“Birds Still Sing When It Rains,” by
“On Sunlight and Old School Horses: Return to Los Angeles,” by
“At 40, I Was Scared to Enter the Dating Pool Again,” by
“Hyphenated,” by
“Shame Isn’t an Incentive Program,” by
“In Case of Emergency,” by
“Numbers Are People Too,” by
“Back in the Saddle: Learning to Love My Dad, Myself, and the Bicycle Again,” by
“It’s a Hard Thing, Getting Back to the Life You Never Really Had,” by
“The Reality of Reentry,” by
“A Reflection on the Cosmic Power of My Own Two Hands,” by
“In Sickness and in Health,” by
“Regeneration,” by
“The World Is Not Waiting Where You Left It,” by
“How I Grew Up Alien,” by
“Riding My First Loop Roller Coaster as an Adult,” by
SPACE
Guest Judges: , ,
Finalist
“The Space Between My Fingers,” by
Honorable Mentions
“The Eight-Legged Tenant,” by *
“How To Become A More Selfish Parent,” by *
“I Live in the Space Between Words,” by *
“A Single Woman’s Space,” by *
“Growing Into My Skin: Tales from the Depths of Ugliness,” by *
“A Walk in the Park,” by *
“Ms. Suzy and Mom: Correspondents from the Trenches,” by *
“The Time I Hatched an Egg,” by *
“The Growing Space Between Us,” by *
“Office Space,” by
“Safe as Houses,” by
“Dead Girls Don’t Eat,” by
“Enough Space To Be Ok,” by
“How To Create Space For Uncertainty In An Autistic Mind,” by
“Rewilding,” by
“Moments Of Perihelion,” by
“The Space Of What Could Have Been,” by
“Star Search,” by
“A Father, A Son, And 29 Cars,” by
“The Midnight Panini King,” by
“The Haunting Of The Mikel Manse,” by
“The Car Ride After The Boy,” by
“Objects In Space Must Always Exist On Some Level,” by
“In Defense Of My Mother,” by
“When Two Of My Worlds Collide In One Contained Space,” by
WORK
Guest Judges: , ,
Finalist
“Black Personhood Does Not Have Equitable Access to the Work of Homeownership,” by
Honorable Mentions
“We Need More Stories Where Nothing Works Out, and Here’s Why,” by *
“A Mother’s Work is Everything,” by *
“How Sex Work Saved Me From Academia,” by *
“Honest Work,” by *
“Who Are You Calling Lazy?” by *
“Hard Sell,” by *
“When a Boy Doesn’t Need to Die,” by *
“This Body of Work,” by *
“This is what we do.” by *
“When Your Life’s Work No Longer Works,” by
“What It’s Like Working in an Office When You Have Tourette’s Syndrome,” by
“Somebody v. Nobody,” by
“To All the Jobs I’ve Had Before,” by
“I’m a Human Error, And That’s Okay,” by
“Secondary Traumatic Stress (or: On the Dispersal of Brain Matter in a Kentucky Trailer),” by
“The Diminishing Value of a Stay-Home Mother After Divorce,” by
“When I Was a Receptionist,” by
“The Low-Down, Dirty-Rotten, No-Good Worship of Work,” by
“Green Is the Color of My Eyes,” by
“Why I Like a Good Funeral,” by
“We Meet on the Page: The Writer-Editor Relationship,” by
“The Rat Race Is for the Rats,” by
“I’m Retired, But I Can’t Stop Working,” by
“There’s Work, and Then There’s Your Life’s Work,” by
November 5, 2021: A previous submission listed as an Honorable Mention has been replaced due to our technical error.
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