First-Time Medium Writer Wins The Grand Prize

Congratulations, Randi Ragan — you are an inspiration!

Adelina Vasile
4 min readOct 12, 2021
Photo by Clément M. on Unsplash

The Medium Writers Challenge official results were published today. You can read the initial post from the Medium Blog here — And the Winners Are.

Someone won both the grand prize and death prompt, with the Keeper of the Place story.

That someone is Randi Ragan. As amazing as it might seem that she won two prizes, what is really spectacular is that she was a first-time Medium writer.

Her About page makes it very clear:

Screenshot by Adelina Vasile from Randi Ragan’s About page.

Basically, Randi became a Medium member in September 2021.

Her winning story was published on August 9 and was the only story she published, until 4 hours ago when she wrote that The Improbable Happened:

Last week, Jermaine Hall, VP of Content at Medium, called and informed me of my wins for both my prompt (Death) and the Grand Prize. I am still in a state of fizzy shock, almost constantly headachy and with rattled nerve endings that make me feel over-caffeinated and slightly queasy.

In this surreal state I find myself…

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Adelina Vasile

Mother, educator, journalist, copywriter. I write about the things I need to learn myself.