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 Randi Ragan

DEATH

Guest Judges: Susan Orlean, Robert Kolker, kelly corrigan, Eve L. Ewing

Finalist

“Keeper of the Place,” by Randi Ragan

Honorable Mentions

“Barn,” by Aditi Khorana* “Death — Italian Style,” by Fiona Cameron Lister* “Sky Burial,” by Jess Kapp* “Lessons from Roosters,” by Sophie Lucido Johnson* “Howl into the Wind,” by Cara Beth Lee* “These Were Our Years,” by Sara Benincasa* “One Stitch at a Time,” by D. A. Langley* “Dead Man’s Bowling Balls,” by Steve Covello* “How To Keep a Dead Cat In Your Freezer,” by Jessica Wildfire* “Bittersweet Symphony,” by Heather S. Wargo “It Was Our Summer of Dying,” by Paul Thomas Zenki “Dear Bryan,” by Avwemoya Izoduwa Ogheneochuko “A Bone’s Story,” by Dorothy Potter Snyder “A Slow Voyage of Acceptance,” by Nic “Daffodils for Dharma,” by Sarah Olson Michel “Beach Day,” by Stephanie Dianne Kordan “Home Birth, Home Death,” by Gerald Grow “The Secret Language,” by Jessica Martin “Man As Deer,” by brian g gilmore (bumpyjonas) “The Mind Does Strange Things When It Accepts That You Going to Die,” by Steve Fitz “A Fate Worse Than Death,” by Ella Alderson “Slayed by Joy,” by Daniel Williams “The Fact that You’re Smiling,” by Kelsi Lindus “A Perfect Boon,” by Natasha K. Sharma “I Might Have Named Her Lucy,” by Lindsay Rae Brown “My Year of Non-Magical Thinking,” by N. Stanley

REENTRY

Guest Judges: Imani Perry, Julio Vincent Gambuto, Saeed Jones, Jude Ellison S. Doyle

Finalist

“The Hope That Holds You Back,” by Sarah Hawthorne

Honorable Mentions

“Leaving Neonatal: A New Birth,” by Jonathan Bright* “Like Icarus,” by Anna Pulley* “How to Make the Turn,” by Rebecca Moore* “Going Back was the Beginning,” by Victoria Meléndez* “Echoes of Love,” by Erin Benson* “Behind Every Lining Is a Silver Cloud,” by Susan M. Brackney* “What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes?” by Elizabeth Dawber* “How The Midnight Express Came To Our Rescue During Our Family Reunion,” by Atash Yaghmaian* “The Bruises on My Arms,” by Stark Raving* “Birds Still Sing When It Rains,” by Jacqueline Dooley “On Sunlight and Old School Horses: Return to Los Angeles,” by Adeline Dimond “At 40, I Was Scared to Enter the Dating Pool Again,” by Kelly Eden “Hyphenated,” by Juhee Lee “Shame Isn’t an Incentive Program,” by Ginger Ayla “In Case of Emergency,” by Cecily Knobler “Numbers Are People Too,” by JoLynne Martinez “Back in the Saddle: Learning to Love My Dad, Myself, and the Bicycle Again,” by Kasai Richardson “It’s a Hard Thing, Getting Back to the Life You Never Really Had,” by Niels Sorrells “The Reality of Reentry,” by Chandra Thomas Whitfield “A Reflection on the Cosmic Power of My Own Two Hands,” by Shannon Calloway “In Sickness and in Health,” by Jenny S “Regeneration,” by Jennifer Irani “The World Is Not Waiting Where You Left It,” by Corey Baughman “How I Grew Up Alien,” by indi.ca “Riding My First Loop Roller Coaster as an Adult,” by Alison Schaffir

SPACE

Guest Judges: Natalie Portman, Dao-Yi Chow, Bonsu Thompson

Finalist

“The Space Between My Fingers,” by Meera Vijayann

Honorable Mentions

“The Eight-Legged Tenant,” by Lara da Rocha* “How To Become A More Selfish Parent,” by Juliane Bergmann* “I Live in the Space Between Words,” by Tracy Neiman* “A Single Woman’s Space,” by Yael Wolfe* “Growing Into My Skin: Tales from the Depths of Ugliness,” by Allyssa Capri* “A Walk in the Park,” by Casira Copes* “Ms. Suzy and Mom: Correspondents from the Trenches,” by Petra Perkins* “The Time I Hatched an Egg,” by Amelia* “The Growing Space Between Us,” by Jill (Conquering Cognitions)* “Office Space,” by Anna Murray “Safe as Houses,” by Monika Dziamka “Dead Girls Don’t Eat,” by Nat “Enough Space To Be Ok,” by Lisa Chudnofsky “How To Create Space For Uncertainty In An Autistic Mind,” by Ella Pearson “Rewilding,” by Lauren Osborn “Moments Of Perihelion,” by Jeanne-Erin “The Space Of What Could Have Been,” by Anastasia Basil “Star Search,” by Jeff Miller “A Father, A Son, And 29 Cars,” by Mark Radcliffe “The Midnight Panini King,” by Laura Todd Carns “The Haunting Of The Mikel Manse,” by Betsy Mikel “The Car Ride After The Boy,” by Meera Simhan “Objects In Space Must Always Exist On Some Level,” by Nick Kolakowski “In Defense Of My Mother,” by Heather Monroe “When Two Of My Worlds Collide In One Contained Space,” by Ali Hall

WORK

Guest Judges: Roxane Gay, Kurt Andersen, David Dennis, Jr.

Finalist

“Black Personhood Does Not Have Equitable Access to the Work of Homeownership,” by Hal H. Harris

Honorable Mentions

“We Need More Stories Where Nothing Works Out, and Here’s Why,” by A. K. Fisher* “A Mother’s Work is Everything,” by Nicci Kadilak* “How Sex Work Saved Me From Academia,” by Ellis Brooks* “Honest Work,” by Rolli* “Who Are You Calling Lazy?” by Tim Wise* “Hard Sell,” by Maggie Devlin* “When a Boy Doesn’t Need to Die,” by Paula Tavrow* “This Body of Work,” by Nayantara Premakumar* “This is what we do.” by Mandi Gundersen* “When Your Life’s Work No Longer Works,” by Lori Welch Brown “What It’s Like Working in an Office When You Have Tourette’s Syndrome,” by Caitlin Jill Anders “Somebody v. Nobody,” by Gunce Arkan “To All the Jobs I’ve Had Before,” by Jade Porter “I’m a Human Error, And That’s Okay,” by Benja Gabriel Thurgood “Secondary Traumatic Stress (or: On the Dispersal of Brain Matter in a Kentucky Trailer),” by Dan Canon “The Diminishing Value of a Stay-Home Mother After Divorce,” by Laura Friedman Williams “When I Was a Receptionist,” by Isha “The Low-Down, Dirty-Rotten, No-Good Worship of Work,” by Brandy L Schillace “Green Is the Color of My Eyes,” by Melissa Toldy “Why I Like a Good Funeral,” by Arianne Rice, M. Div. CDWF “We Meet on the Page: The Writer-Editor Relationship,” by Brenda Peterson “The Rat Race Is for the Rats,” by Ryan Frawley “I’m Retired, But I Can’t Stop Working,” by K M Brown “There’s Work, and Then There’s Your Life’s Work,” by Taylor Moran

November 5, 2021: A previous submission listed as an Honorable Mention has been replaced due to our technical error.

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