A New Anthology Celebrates Seattle’s Underrepresented South End

‘Emerald Reflections’ Collects the Best of the “South Seattle Emerald”

By Paul Constant • October 26, 2016 1:30 am

I do not believe it is hyperbolic to say that a little piece of Seattle died on the day that the Seattle Post- Intelligencer stopped publishing a daily print edition. The Seattle Times publishes some wonderful journalism, but a single newspaper cannot accurately portray the entire soul of a city. In the years since the P-I print edition died, though, we have seen some significant online publications grow to fill that void. To name just three: Seattle Globalist has tracked Seattle’s growth into a world-class city with world-sized problems; Seattlish has become a beautifully vulgar bible for City Hall-watchers and Washington policy wonks; and the South Seattle Emerald has covered the city’s south end.

The Emerald is especially significant because it gives voice to a part of the city always underserved in the media. For decades, local television stations, daily newspapers, and alternative weeklies portrayed a Seattle that, geographically speaking, started at Pioneer Square and spread only northward, past the ship canal and into Ballard and Fremont and other lily-white neighborhoods. The Emerald isn’t the first publication to cover south Seattle, but it’s quickly developed a voice that feels uniquely like the south end: proud, loud, and smart. The Emerald carries none of the ’90s-era detached snark that dominated alternative media in this city for way too long; it’s unafraid to talk about race, it’s eager to advocate for the voiceless, and it’s thrilled to promote art as a participant and not just a bystander.

This week, the Emerald is launching an anthology in conjunction with Third Place Books’ in-house publisher, Third Place Press. Emerald Reflections: A South Seattle Emerald Anthology collects poems, visual art, and prose originally published on the Emerald’s website. Edited by the Emerald’s publisher, Marcus Harrison Green, the pieces provide a mission statement for the Emerald and for the city it represents.