Achievements
Disorderly Conduct
When I reached the fourth grade, I found myself in Georgia in an inner-city school. As the only "white girl" there, except for my cousin who was in kindergarten, my school life was difficult at best. I'd get up in the morning, work the farm, then get dressed for school. I walked down the dirt road to the bus stop and spent the next 7 hours defending myself. Life was just hard. My parents had recently split and it landed us in poverty-ville USA, on a piece of ground my mother's family endearingly called a farm, even though we barely grew anything more than dirt and misery.
By Veronica Coldiron2 years ago in Writers
The Poem That Made Me a Poet
It started as an assignment. I was in my second year at Western Washington University, and was lucky enough to snag the last seat in Jane Wong’s class on food writing. The course focused on our connection to food. How it inspires us, challenges us, fills us with nutrients and love.
By Katherine J. Zumpano2 years ago in Writers
Casino Addictions, Memories
In the dimly lit corners of memory's labyrinth, there exists a relic of my literary infancy. A story, earnestly penned during my youth, beckons like a whisper from the past. It tells of a rainy day in a nameless town, of souls ensnared in the allure of a casino's neon-lit illusions, and of lives entangled in the threads of fate, or perhaps misfortune. As I revisit this embryonic creation, it awakens emotions I had long buried beneath the layers of time.
By ANTICHRIST SUPERSTAR2 years ago in Writers
Examining My First Story
The recent fairytale challenge on Vocal had me digging deep into my computer’s memory to find a story that I wrote almost twenty years ago. It was a short story about a young girl who finds a coin in her washing machine on a very hot summer day. She makes a wish on it and it comes true; the temperature drops by twenty degrees! With a second load of laundry, she finds another coin in the machine and makes a wish on that one as well. That second wish is for an awesome thirteenth birthday.
By Rae Fairchild (MRB)2 years ago in Writers
The Journey Of A Lifetime
Around 3 years ago, I was 19/20 and not sure what I wanted to do with my life. There was quite a lot of uncertainty that would circle around in my head a lot of the time. One day, my boyfriend gave me the suggestion of writing down the thoughts that were making me feel stuck. So, I opened a notebook and started to write. It gave me a sense of relief that I hadn’t felt before. It made me feel like I could finally communicate what I was thinking, something I have struggled with for a while, something I have been doing my best to work on. This experience is what made me decide to post my very first vocal piece called “Family Isn’t Always Forever.”
By YesItsMocha2 years ago in Writers
An Unforgettable Interview With An American Icon. Top Story - September 2023.
In 1984 I was an education manager, and English teacher, in a secondary school. Though I loved my work I yearned to write, too. I had scribbled down all kinds of ideas that I felt would give voice to my creativity, talent and aspirations, but they had all ended up in the bin, being roundly beaten by low confidence, a lack of self-belief and simple fear about how my efforts might be received. But the yearning to have my writing seen by others only intensified as time went by.
By Elaine Sihera2 years ago in Writers
How did I Start Writing?
A few months ago, I flew back to my hometown and shared a 2.5-month time with my parents. Nearly every morning, I woke up early and wrote something on my MacBook. This daily routine of mine surprised my parents greatly, despite their awareness of my previous book publications. From their memory, Zhimin was a boy deeply afraid of writing.
By Zhimin Zhan2 years ago in Writers
A Software Craftsman's Journey to Becoming a Storyteller
When we speak of firsts, a sense of nostalgia brushes against our hearts. It's the delicate and fragile memory of an original creation, the kernel from which the tree of experience grows. For me, that nascent memory takes me back to a Medium article. This treatise tackled the rather cerebral topic of "Understanding Inheritance with C#." If this sounds like a no-nonsense technical document aimed squarely at programmers, you're not wrong. It was precise, unembellished, and intensely pragmatic—much like a well-written code.
By Abnoan Muniz2 years ago in Writers
