By Camille Bishop Winter 2020 Kaplan Award Winner Outside of Elma, Washington, there are two grey cylinders that tower above the trees. They can be seen on clear days from the road, two distinctive concrete mountains, green all around. When you drive that highway, traveling between Olympia and Aberdeen, there isn’t much to catch your eye. … Read More
By Hannah Krieg Winter 2020 Kaplan Award Winner His bedroom is smaller than mine. I don’t have the square footage for reference, but my best judgement tells me his bedroom is smaller than mine. Then again, my best judgement would have kept me from ever seeing his bedroom in the first place. On second thought, … Read More
By Rochelle Bowyer Winter 2020 Kaplan Award Winner My household was anything but a patriarchy, it was a matriarchy. The “Man” of the house responsibility starts and ends with the trash. One of my few memories of my father before he arrested and was never to be seen again was, leaning over the small front … Read More
By Joshua Lee Winter 2020 Kaplan Award Winner Early December. Sleepless in Seattle was the in-flight entertainment; the plane landed just as Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan met atop the Empire State Building. It’s a dumb movie, but it gave my brain something, anything to focus on on the way back to Hawaii, on my way home. … Read More
By Megan Saunders Spring 2019 Kaplan Award Winner I’ve always hated loud noises. Loud, banging, ringing in your ears noises. Noises that shake you to the core, the sounds that make your body rattle and your heart tries to steady you but cannot. Your heart beats faster, faster, faster. Thump, thump, thump, thump. Your hands … Read More
By Steven Riepe Spring 2019 Kaplan Award Winner I anxiously wait for her to finish putting on her makeup and coat. Once she does, I run out the door heading straight for the passenger side of the white Toyota pickup she drove. She tells me to slow down and reassures me that she’s coming. But … Read More
By Ryan Phelan Spring 2019 Kaplan Award Winner It was a scorcher as weathermen like to say. The kind of day that you really want your windows wide open. A little hot for the late spring isn’t it? Not unbearable, but strikingly warm for my untanned Seattle skin. I lived (and still live) in a … Read More
By Makenna Dreher Spring 2019 Kaplan Award Winner Shoreline, WA: I had completely lost it. I had veered off on a side street on my way home from work to chuck my half-eaten Jersey Mike’s sandwich out my car window while “Mary Did You Know” blasted from a CD. I was so obsessed with throwing … Read More
By Oloth Insyxiengmay Spring 2019 Kaplan Award Winner These rooms are eerily becoming too familiar. Cold, soulless, no windows, no presence of life or form. Just four barren concrete walls accompanied by a steel sink and toilet contraption. Like the men whom these walls contain in times past and present, the room feels empty. As … Read More
By Giulia Szanyi Spring 2019 Kaplan Award Winner I didn’t cry. I always cry. Maybe this is what it’s like being an adult I think to myself. I am aboard yet another grimy Greyhound bus going back to school in Seattle and baffled by my lack of tears after giving my dad our customary long … Read More