Top Stories
New stories you’ll love, handpicked for you by our team and updated daily.
What I Learned Writing 24k Words in 5 Days
If you’re struggling with your book, you need to surrender yourself to your story. You don’t have to give up — you really shouldn’t do that. But you might just need to surrender yourself to let the story go where it wants to.
By Leigh Victoria Phan, MS, MFA4 months ago in Writers
📢 Raise Your Voice Thread: 10/09/2025
Our “Raise Your Voice Threads” are hosted most alternating Thursdays at 12PM ET to offer creators more avenues to uncover exceptional stories on Vocal. As we are continuously searching for fresh creators and inspiring stories, this thread provides an opportunity to exchange and discuss the stories that have moved and motivated us on Vocal.
By Raise Your Voice by Vocal4 months ago in Resources
Kakheti Wine Tour
Any Georgian will proudly tell you that Georgia is the birthplace of wine. Our tour guide told us about the archeological evidence that the ancient way of making wine in a large clay pot capable of holding hundreds and even thousands of liters of wine called qvevri [pronounced kwevri] goes back at least 8,000 years. However, the recently found earliest qvevri are now estimated to be around 11,000 years.
By Lana V Lynx4 months ago in Proof
The Box That Knocks. Runner-Up in A Knock at the Door Challenge.
It was one of those nights. The kind where time drags on and the world outside feels far away, as if everyone else were somewhere else, doing something else, and you were left behind in your own house, stuck in the limbo of boredom and solitude.
By Emily Albers4 months ago in Fiction
Book Review: "Imagist Poetry" ed. by Peter Jones
Hopefully you and I can skim over the legacy of the poet Ezra Pound, who was basically the leader of this movement, and concentrate on what the movement itself was actually about. Imagism: a subculture of poetry focused on deliberate imagery, blossoming in the early 20th century at roughly the same time as Modernism and including a whole range of poets that we've probably heard of, and some that fell into obscurity. I was quite surprised that I became interested in this anthology but I've been waiting a whole long damn time to read it, so here we are.
By Annie Kapur4 months ago in Geeks
Still Life
“I don’t care if it pays a thousand dollars an hour, I’m not going to paint portraits.” I half-listened to my brother’s pleas for me to consider a wealthy woman’s very generous offer, which I expected had more than a few strings attached. I told him I’d get a job with a boss if I wanted someone to tell me what to be. I returned to the kitchen to finish the dishes in the sink, and I was still rinsing when a pair of tanned legs flickered up the stairs to my studio. I dropped the dishrag into the sink and sprinted up the spiral to unlock the door. A twentyish blonde was picking at a scab on her knee when I opened the door.
By Harper Lewis4 months ago in Fiction
FPS: Falling Leaves Challenge Winners
Welcome to the first stop in our Fall Poetry Series! How do we judge a haiku? Beyond the rhythm and the 5-7-5 rule, it’s less about counting syllables and more about catching a feeling. Does it paint a clear picture? Make you laugh? Make you stop for a second? The best ones don’t need to be picked apart, they just land softly and stay with you.
By Vocal Curation Team4 months ago in Resources
October 5, 1969
There are plenty of reasons to believe that we are at the end of something. I have watched plenty of the rapture videos out there, both before and after, trying to find some practical reason as to why the chosen ones were not chosen, and they can no longer work or even commute after losing their jobs and cars. There is the growing sense that the world is losing its collective sanity - for what it was worth - with wars, protests, authoritarian governments that seem to ignore what the people want (especially if they put them in power). Things are crumbling. As the poet said, The centre cannot hold. We are doomed!
By Kendall Defoe 4 months ago in Geeks
