You wake up in hazy, hot darkness beneath your comforter. There is a sound coming from somewhere in your room. It is the sound of a foot, shifting positions. It is soft, but heavy, as if someone tall is trying not to make any noise. You go through your list. Your roommate. But he is gone until Tuesday, and it’s Sunday. And why would he come into your room unless it was an emergency. Your girlfriend, but you saw her last night at her place and then left. Sometimes she comes here to shower after the gym, which could be it. Very quietly, you turn your wrist towards your face. It glows green, illuminating the time: 3:32 a.m. So yeah. Your girlfriend would not be coming from the gym at this time.

This past year has been a time of wonderfully huge growth for our li’l publication that could. We’ve taken our first steps from the online woods into the public eye around town, and we couldn’t be happier with our trajectory as the new year approaches. We’re immensely grateful to everyone who’s come along with us on the journey and helped us reveal our creative natures via support and readership.
As such, it is with great pride that we announce that The Echo is the media sponsor for The Gregorys!

The rain fell hard as the moon hung in the obsidian sky like a chandelier. Bramble Manor stood resolute over the dark village of Black Brier. The village, founded on partial truths and gossip, sat at the edge of the cloaked woods surrounding it like a crescent. The only way to leave was down an unkept dirt road through an opening in the black woods. 

It was just plain rotten luck, or perhaps some cruel twist of fate, that Melinoë, the goddess of nightmares, had plenty of nightmares of her own.

Nightmares of smooth scales and winding bodies pulled flush against her own. Serpents, snakes. They curled around her shoulders, tangled in her hair, corkscrewed around her wrists and ankles. They pulled taut, slithered, and writhed, covered her mouth, her eyes, her ears. And she woke up gasping. 

On The Boards hosted the “pervs” of Seattle for part two of its 20^th anniversary year. Submissions from all over the world to our backyards were carefully curated down to a selection of erotic short films that have a little bit of everything for everybody. And at least one thing that expands your mind to possibilities previously unthought of.

Over the past decade, Morgue Anne has forged a creative home at The Rendezvous, a historic venue in the heart of Belltown, where, until a few weeks ago, you could see everything from live music, to comedy shows, public figure drawing sessions, burlesque performances, and beyond. “I’ve been working at the Rendezvous in one way or another for the last ten years or so. I’ve been the events and booking director for the past three years,” she said. But her experience goes beyond just booking the shows:

I joined The Echo because I see the same spark and desire in everyone who creates with us. When one of our writers interviews someone with important, silly, or beautiful things to say about their work or life, we all shine. When another writer pours their thoughts and emotions into a piece of narrative or poetry, someone’s cup is filled for the day. Or when still another Creative captures a salient scene with their camera, Truth regains a beacon.

The true value in community media is in the way it forges local connection and identity, providing spaces for diverse voices—something that is often lost in conglomerate media, who tend to cite the same sources (often one another), parrot the same talking points, and create an overwhelming agenda on behalf of their owners or investors.

I closed out Pride Month by attending the fabulous and charming Queer Talent Show at Friday Afternoon Tea in Wallingford. This Queer and woman-owned business is a wonderful location with kind and knowledgeable staff, and their get-together for the end of Pride was cozy, loving, and all-around magical. Owned by the amazing Friday Elliott, Friday Afternoon Tea is quite simply the place to be.

Aaron Johnson (he/him) is on a mission, the type of undertaking that comes to you through lived experiences. Ben Wilson (he/him), the producer of and participant in the short film Dark and Tender, invited me to attend the film’s screening at the Seattle Black Film Festival. The film, which aims to be a larger documentary, tells the story of the CUT Project.

On June 10, 2025, I had the fortunate and unique opportunity to sit down with Seattle artist Heidi Fairall. Her quirky and whimsical style shows not only to how she perceives art, but life itself, and was refreshing and inspirational for aspiring creatives alike. For myself, she made me think about how I approach the creative process when it comes to my own projects.

Base Camp Studios 2 isn’t just a studio space. It’s a community. It’s a reminder that art lives through people, through shared space, and through the simple act of saying, “Hey, come take a look.” If you are looking for art that moves, surprises, and welcomes you, head to Base Camp. You won’t just see the art. You’ll feel it.

Back in March, I had the pleasure of interviewing Emergence Films’ cofounder Rachel Noll James and discussed the forthcoming Emerging Filmmakers Program. Open to anyone who identifies as a woman, this program’s mission is to elevate marginalized voices in the filmmaking world while giving filmmakers of all experience levels the opportunity to create a feature length movie. A few months later, this year’s cohort of emerging filmmakers has been selected! There are three groups: Team Pocket Topic (Melissa Tumas and Sonia M. Kandathil), Team Mother Tongue (Jo Woods and Sarah Mona), and Team Cosmic Coyote (Mia McGlinn, Ila Dreesen, and Sydney Renee).

It’s very different from my experiences growing up moderately religious in the South. It took away the shame and self-blame. In heteronormative, vanilla sex, there are too many unspoken expectations, too many assumptions about what’s going to happen, that some people just begin following the script without any sort of communication. This, I believe, leads to situations like what 17-year-old me experienced, where I left thinking I had led someone on and realized years later that I was actually assaulted. I don’t know if he knows this though.

On December 7, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor marked the start of the United States’ involvement in World War II. It also started a wave of fear and unrest throughout the country, leading to an overwhelming prejudice against Japanese Americans. “Most of us had no ties to Japan,” Lilly Kodama, a survivor, explained. “We had never been there. We had never even seen it.” Similar to the reactionary racism and prejudice against Arab Americans following 9/11, the discrimination against Japanese Americans had no true basis in fact, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order only created more harm and prejudice against an already vulnerable community.

The term "technical books" makes it sound like there are a bunch of stuffed shirts walking around with large impenetrable tomes, but Ada’s caters to far more accessible scientific, science fiction, and fantasy books. When you browse the shelves, you find that science is a broad category covering the hard sciences like biology and chemistry, the soft sciences like psychology and sociology, and the scientific arts like cooking and architecture.

Elliott Bay is a go-to spot for me. It helps that it is near my home, but it is much more than solely convenience based. The layout and the books they spotlight really draw me in, no matter what the genre is. I find myself gravitating towards genres I’m usually not interested in due to the enticing books they have on display. The staff are helpful without being overbearing, and the attached cafe serves as a nice incentive to stay a bit longer, order food, and relax with a good book.

my heart’s passing: an original poem by Maxwell Meier

A three-part poem from a Black woman in America:

Many of the sandwiches on these “best of” Seattle lists were one or two cities removed. Going to Lynnwood for a good sandwich is fine for some people, but it is not feasible or practical for the majority of us in the city. So, when coming up with my own roundup, I stuck to a few rules. The first was that this was a list of terrific Seattle banh mi, and so should stay within city boundaries.