In the early 2000s, Sonia Raman was on the traditional track to a successful career in law, but coaching basketball kept bouncing back to her. A lifelong fan of the sport, Raman—who played at Tufts University and coached throughout her collegiate and post-grad career—eventually heeded the call, making a pivot that would change her life….

“I love the saying, ‘sleep when you are dead.’” Few embody it like Tommy Gregory—tireless artist, curator, and connector who seems to be everywhere at once, installing work, throwing receptions, or plotting the next show. Gregory joined the Port of Seattle as senior project manager in 2019, just as airport art collections were gaining global…

When Payam Khastkhodaei began teaching piano to a family friend’s daughter in his Bothell home at 16, he relied on the same method he had been taught as a kid—classical songbooks, rigid practice, and pieces he never connected with. It didn’t take long to see she was losing interest. “I had learned from the Alfred…

When the Nobel Assembly called Dr. Mary E. Brunkow around 1 a.m. on October 6 to deliver the news that she had been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, she did not answer the phone call. When they called immediately a second time she set her phone to “Do Not Disturb” and…

For brothers Seth and Zach Pacleb, all you need to know about their new eatery is in the name: Pidgin Cooperative. The employee-owned, pan-Asian restaurant and bottle shop that opened last fall in Fishermen’s Terminal represents a level playing field where people come together to fulfill a collective culinary vision. Fittingly, it’s inspired by the…

Crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Standing on Medgar Evers’ driveway. Looking over the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. At 16, Alexis Mercedes Rinck had heard stories of these Civil Rights Movement landmarks from her politically engaged grandmother, who was raising her, but in 2012, Rinck was there. And she was meeting the people—sung and unsung—of…

The path to FrizzLit Editions began in the fraught days of March 2020. Christopher Frizzelle, then an editor at the Stranger, was searching for new ways to reach readers in a city that had all but shut down. “My brilliant idea is, we’ll do a book club,” he remembers. That first book club—a quarantine edition…

Like almost everyone who has spent time at On the Boards, Shari D. Behnke has memories of shows that have deeply moved her. And then there are the performances she found so jarring that she walked out part-way through—few and far between, but still a hazard of frequenting contemporary performing arts. “That’s one of the…

People who know Tessa Hulls won’t be surprised by her initial reaction to learning she’d won a Pulitzer Prize for her first book, the graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts (Macmillan, 2024). “I think I was in shock for a couple of months,” Hulls says. “I went into the backcountry for as long as I needed until…

When Thomas Marriott was 15 years old and a student at Garfield High School, he would sneak into the now-defunct New Orleans Creole Restaurant in Pioneer Square to catch a glimpse of some of the local jazz legends. Over 40 years later, Marriott, a longtime trumpeter and composer, is reinvigorating the scene with Seattle Jazz…

In 2021, Kiesha B. Free was at a crossroads in her life. She had left her job at Microsoft to pursue public speaking and was finding her way as a mother after a divorce—all while navigating a world emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. “I was nowhere near my family,” says Free, who grew up in…