Welcome to the biggest Arts + Performance issue we’ve ever made. Phew!

The issue hits the stands today, and you can use our map to find a copy of your very own. And we’ll be rolling out the stories here on TheStranger.com over the next two weeks, so keep checking back. 

It’s been a rough few years in the world of art and culture. In 2020, we asked our venues, restaurants, and basically every other institution in the city to hold their breath for a year and a half, and just when they started to get some oxygen, we knocked them back down with inflation, dwindling audiences, and the existential angst of another Trump election. Meanwhile, the cost of living keeps going up, but we keep forgetting to pay artists living wages.

All that’s to say, it’s becoming increasingly impossible to be an artist in this city, so we wanted to say THANK YOU to the creatives who have stuck it out and are keeping Seattle weird, beautiful, and a little bit out of this world.

In the issue, you’re gonna meet some of our favorite people. (Unless you already knew them, in which case, we applaud your good taste.) We’re newly obsessed with Sophy Wong, a costume and fashion designer who is clearly from another planet. Her reimagined space suits are built for our post-climate crisis future, but we’d wear them any day of the week. Contributor Mindie Lind interviewed comedian Tina Friml in what Lind affectionately called a “crip-on-crip” discussion about idiots, internalized ableism, and how having a disability can feel like being a VIP. We’ve never read a discussion like it—which, they pointed out, is part of the problem.

Then we visited artist Natalie Krick’s SoDo studio, where she’s building her new installation for the Frye, which gives new life to famous portraits of Marilyn Monroe featured in Bert Stern’s The Complete Last Sitting, all taken for Vogue just six weeks before Monroe died in 1962.

And did you know that Pretty Girls Make Graves is getting back together?? Managing Editor Megan Seling once said she’d throw herself into traffic to get to see them live again (in a Make-a-Wish kinda way—don’t make it that dark). To mark this miracle of local hardcore, Megan interviewed (almost) all the current members of the band (dangit, Derek), as well as some of their colleagues, friends, and fans, then swept up their sound bites into an oral history of this iconic local group. For those of you who are new to PGMG, it’s a perfect primer. For the rest of us, it’s one small effort to try to make sense of the band’s magic.

We’re getting ready for the new seasons of, well, everything that happens onstage. That includes the Pacific Northwest Ballet, which is pulling out all the stops for their new production of Sleeping Beauty. News Editor Rich Smith talked to local glass artist Preston Singletary, who’s designing the intricate, majestic set (not made out of glass, though, it turns out—that’d probably be very dangerous).

We also explored how the city’s arts community is finding new ways to thrive in this crazy place. We met Katie Lee Ellison, who founded the reading series Nonfiction for No Reason, which is doing its part to revitalize the local writing scene. But we also took a look at the big picture: Staff Writer Vivian McCall dug into the potential of Doors Open, a new $100 million fund from King County that could very well save some of our most beloved local arts institutions.

We offer you a list of contributor Meg Van Huygen’s very favorite restaurants (make it your mission to visit each one this season), and your favorite authors’ very favorite books. And lastly, as a treat: Senior Staff Writer Charles Mudede and Professor Daubi Abe wrote “Anatomy of a Song: Rapper’s Delight,” a deep-dive annotation of the song that became the foundation of modern hiphop. It’s just the radio version for now. As we mentioned above, this is the biggest A+P issue we’ve ever done. We’ll have to save the full 14-minute track for next time.

Hannah Murphy Winter
Editor-in-Chief