Post-Pulse Rallying Cry
Tuesday, June 14, 2016 4:23 — 2 Comments
Although it was a lovely gesture, we didn’t need President Obama to officially declare June LGBTQ Pride Month this year. From the first Pride Parade in June of 1970 to the legislative victories granting marriage equality in 2013, this month has always been a time for queers to celebrate our community’s beautiful, hard-won freedoms. And love. The way that only we can love. But there’s a catch. Each victory carries us further from the fucked up, riotous place in which our community was born. It was not so long ago that queer America experienced our first mass killing, the AIDS […]
Raft of Dead Monkeys and the Complete History of Seattle
Monday, May 23, 2016 13:10 — 0 Comments
On June 8 at 7 p.m., Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum will premier a documentary that could very well blow your mind. The film is called The Complete History of Seattle and, primarily, it revolves around a band called Raft of Dead Monkeys. With a title like The Complete History of Seattle, you might think it would be a boring historical summary of some people digging trenches, constructing a highway at some point, and some old white men claiming ownership over everything. While this isn’t what the movie is about, explicitly, it is maybe metaphorically about. Some young guys have started […]
The Alchemy of Haris Durrani’s Spiritual Sci-Fi – Ahsan Butt
Tuesday, May 10, 2016 14:45 — 1 Comment
A time-traveling conquistador, who is the devil, h(a)unts the eccentric uncle of a half-Dominican, half-Pakistani, American Muslim kid, “Joeâ€â€”real name, Jihad—who is left wondering what’s real and what’s halal in a cynical, post-9/11 New York. This hints at only some of what Haris A. Durrani is up to in his 116 page debut, Technologies of the Self. The story is structured around Uncle Tomas’ fragmented accounts of his confrontations with the devil—Santiago. As family members take turns sounding off about the credibility of the crass and incorrigible—old and lonely—Tomas, Joe’s own reality and memories begin to hum to Tomas’ frequency. […]
Love For The Craft: The Weird Tales Of W.H. Pugmire
Tuesday, March 1, 2016 10:47 — 1 Comment
In the early 1970s Seattle’s seekers of the macabre were stalked by Count Pugsly, a ghoulish vampire lurking in the horror-filled chambers of Jones’ Fantastic Museum. 20 years later that same bogeyman could be seen, in drag, washing dishes and busing tables at The Cyclops Cafe. Today a portrait of the ghoul hangs on the cafe’s cyclopean walls and I asked a cyclopean waiter if he knew who the face in the portrait belonged to, “His name is Wilum-” he said, “I haven’t seen him in quite a few years, but I know he’s still around.” Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire is still around, he may not […]
Job Tips: Selling Meat from a Truck – Paul Handley
Monday, February 15, 2016 20:59 — 0 Comments
First, get in a positive mindset. Then buy an unaffordable four dollar cup of coffee. Door-to- door salesman in our line always have a couple hundred dollars in cash to make change, so I would usually pull out a single to buy a lotto ticket along with my java. Next convert a shot in the basketball hoop installed in the warehouse with a difficulty level above five. Misses can be compensated by a weird bounce resulting in a satisfying wham into a meat-truck panel. Another option is to drive a golf ball off an apartment in the new complex that […]
One Super Important Question for Six
Thursday, January 21, 2016 11:30 — 1 Comment
Hello! This is simple: I wanted to ask some people who do great work in the city what they thought was the most important issue facing Seattle in 2016. Here are their answers: Matt “Spek†Watson (writer, musician): I think there’s a very strong current of new capital and resources running through the city right now, and the challenge is not only going to be how we avoid being swept away by that current, but how we use it to power new programs and policies that strengthen existing communities. I think we need to think creatively and act quickly to […]
All Millennials are Kevin McCallister
Tuesday, December 22, 2015 11:38 — 0 Comments
The following is an excerpt from Shaun Scott’s e-book “Something Better: Millennials and Late Capitalism at the Movies,†available on Amazon and iTunes from Thought Catalog Books. This holiday season marks the 25-year anniversary since the release of Home Alone. Millions of Millennials may grow nostalgic for the memories the movie evokes. Because no matter what became of Macaulay Culkin, Millennials will always see a part of themselves in Kevin McCallister. Home Alone begins when members of a giant extended family in Chicago take turns demeaning young Kevin McCallister. In the film’s breathless opening sequence, Kevin McCallister has his culinary […]
Jim Brantingham’s Traveling Light
Wednesday, December 9, 2015 11:47 — 0 Comments
Hello! Welcome to the announcement for the first book produced by The Monarch Review (available to buy below!). We are thrilled to say we’ve completed the editing, laying out, printing and production of Traveling Light by Seattle author, Jim Brantingham. Â You may remember Jim’s work in the first print edition from us, Monarch #1. He was the only author in the anthology to write a piece of fiction and a poem. Jim was also the first fiction writer we published on the Web site some five years ago. Traveling Light is a beautiful book filled with stories, memories and analysis […]
Against Where’d You Go, Bernadette – Alex Gallo-Brown
Tuesday, December 1, 2015 9:44 — 6 Comments
I recently moved back to Seattle after living away for almost seven years. One of the first things I read after I returned was Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2012), the celebrated comic novel by Maria Semple. I sought it out mostly because of its setting: urban Seattle. I had long been surprised by how little the city was represented in contemporary literature. As a young writer growing up here, I had looked for writing that spoke to the city that I knew and mostly found writing about the Pacific Northwest—stories that were set near the city but almost never inside […]
Sweet Amy Nicole: An Interview With Benefits
Monday, November 30, 2015 10:52 — 0 Comments
For lack of a better term, some might say Sweet Amy Nicole is a business woman, a working girl, or even a professional, but professional or no, she made me feel like a pro… I’m a Journalist, for an arts & entertainment magazine and my contemporaries might ask that I defend contacting a woman with Amy’s expertise, but I’m also a Gonzo Journalist, possessed by a demon. “Go for it-” it says, “Have another drink. Talk to her. The power of Journalism compels thee!” After a little foreplay, not only did Amy agree to an interview, but looked forward to […]
The answer isn't poetry, but rather language
- Richard Kenney
