Seattle Met • 27th February 2025

Can Hugo House Write Its Next Chapter? (Writer)

From 2001 to 2003 I was a writer-in-residence at the literary nonprofit Hugo House. I was paid around $250 a month. My job was to talk to people in weekly open-to-the-public office hours, teach, and produce events. The house itself, a rambling Victorian in Capitol Hill, was almost always open. People on staff had fluid roles. The accountant might double as a DJ. The grounds manager might staff the merch table. Programming left room for surprises. Some semifamous writer might come out of hiding a...

11th December 2023

PoetryFoundation.org (Editor)

A sample of my editing and headline writing for the Poetry Foundation website, where I was an Associate Editor.

City Arts Magazine • 1st January 2009

The Dumbing Down of the Dailies (Writer)

Newspaper culture critics are an endangered species. What does this mean for Seattle artists?

Sheila Farr chooses her words carefully when she describes the day her job disappeared. She makes a practice of being careful with language, and this is a story she wants to get right. “Here is how it was put to me,” she says, scrupulously recreating her conversation with Seattle Times higher-ups. “They were eliminating my position as art critic. The position would be gone.” A fine-boned woman with a m

Seattle Met • 27th December 2008

The Divorce Next Door (Writer)

IT WAS 1997 and my husband and I had lived in Leschi for a few months when Lee and Sandra moved in next door. Like us, they were a childless couple in their mid-30s. Like us, they left early on weekdays and returned late, always working. Initially we both kept the front yards of our Leschi ramblers presentable, but gradually we let them go: dandelions, moss, no sprinklers to preserve the green. If Lee and Sandra* mirrored us on a superficial level, there were deep differences, too. They were Chi

Seattle Met • 13th December 2008

Two Days in a Gamer's Life (Writer)

A blow-by-blow description of a gamer conquering the frontier of Spore. He stayed up for two days straight,

The New York Times • 7th December 2003

School Away From School (Writer)

Andy Markishtum's hair reaches past his shoulders, thick and shining. He speaks in a low monotone, a rocker growl, and his favorite band is Cradle of Filth. As a student at McKay High School in Salem, Ore., Andy was part of the stoner crowd -- a self-described slacker with a backpack full of half-finished assignments. ''I'd get too distracted,'' he says. ''There would be kids sitting right next to me talking or something, and instead of paying attention to the teacher, I would drift off. Someone

The New York Times • 10th March 2002

Forever Young (Writer)

Treva Throneberry sits across from me, smiling bashfully as if she is embarrassed to be seen here. We are in a dank, spooky visiting room in the Clark County Jail in Vancouver, Wash., looking at each other through a thick Plexiglas window on which someone has scrawled ''I Love You.'' We speak to each other through telephone receivers. We are talking about high school. She remembers first-period history, when she would sometimes fall asleep with her head down. ''The teacher would bang on the desk

The Stranger • 25th February 1999

The 37 Least Powerful People in Seattle (Editor)

Managed a group of reporters interviewing people who self-identified as powerless. The cover parodied Entertainment Weekly.