By Trevor Keaton Pogue Spring 2012 Kaplan Award Winner It’s a Tuesday on a dusk in Seattle’s University District, and The Dollar Tree is filled with about twenty customers. Behind the farthest front counter, at check stand three, there is a young black girl in a faded black Dollar Tree polo shirt and a thin … Read More
By Elizabeth Hsu Spring 2012 Kaplan Award Winner She comes over to visit me in my apartment in Seattle, and she wants to go on a run. “You? You want to go running? Like, do you even have running shoes? Since when did you run?” True, she joined the cross country team in high school, … Read More
By Nina Milligan Spring 2012 Kaplan Award Winner JP was one of a kind. He was free to live a life he chose to live and did not care what others think of him. I respect that. –-Anonymous Apr 17, 2008 12:43 PM ++++++++++++ I knew JP as a customer when I was a floor broker … Read More
By Matthew Hicks Spring 2012 Kaplan Award Winner I turned around as soon as he started mooning a group of schoolchildren. I couldn’t take it. Daniel was just too much to handle. I began walking ahead of him, increasing the distance between us. But two minutes later, he jumped on me in hysterical fits. “No, … Read More
By Elke Hautala Winter 2012 Kaplan Award Winner When I was eighteen I lived on the street for a month. It was one of those lost periods of time that now I look back on and think, “Was that really me?” I was obsessed with California; maybe not what it was but what it wasn’t … Read More
By Joseph Sutton-Holcomb Winter 2012 Kaplan Award Winner Fall, 7th grade: When I bought the T-shirt, I felt svelte, elated to fit in a size ‘M’ — plus, black is slimming. Winter, sophomore year (college): It still fit when I threw it away. There were holes in each armpit and tiny cracks -webbed across the picture … Read More
By Jessica Johansson Winter 2012 Kaplan Award Winner Every morning my mom would wake me up and the smell of breakfast would hit me. I was allowed to watch television in the mornings as I ate my breakfast, which was a huge incentive for me to wake up. I was always in a slight zombie … Read More
By Mali Main Winter 2012 Kaplan Award Winner Like some beautiful and syphilitic old whore, Aurora’s blighted parts are also her most appealing. Past the bridge where hundreds satisfied their sadness in suicide, Aurora is shaped by damp concrete edges, smoothly worn sidewalks, almost level with the street. In gray daylight, Aurora looks her age. … Read More
By Carlos Reiner Winter 2012 Kaplan Award Winner I can make people uncomfortable. And I like it that way. If one doesn’t make others uncomfortable from time to time they needn’t exist. To keep others on their toes is to be a presence in the room, and not simple an afterthought. The gay movement follows … Read More
By Laurel Christensen Winter 2011 Kaplan Award Winner There were times we all hated it. Our early hiking trips were marked with whining children and dragging feet, our bodies only moving forward when our parents either encouraged us with trail mix or threatened us with abandonment. Our bike trips were a lesson in first aid, … Read More