I remember seeing really super cool little cakes for the nominees last year, but it looks like it's back to QFC cakes this year. Too bad... those little weird green ones looked so cool!
Every year I look at the short list for the Stranger Genius Awards hoping to see Ben Verellen nominated for music and every year he is ignored. He has the distinct honor of making dozens and dozens of local and national bands sound better with his amplifiers, then he picks up a guitar and makes them all sound inferior to his band Helms Alee. I haven't seen one nominee since the inception of that award that holds a candle what Ben has accomplished and offered the Seattle music scene.
Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang have the 2 most accomplished resumes in music internationally right now. @10 Ben is an amazing and talented asset to Seattle's music scene, but don't oversell, this is a great batch (with the possible exception of Katie Kate, who will be much more interesting in 5-10 years' time)
Congratulations to all the nominees! Special shout out to recent Frye artists; Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey, Jherek Bischoff, Eyvind Kang, and Matthew Offenbacher. Good luck to you all. We are thrilled to be hosting the Shortlist events this summer. Stay tuned to fryemuseum.org for event details.
I'm a bit torn on Stephenson. He obviously is a genius, and has been putting out solid work for a long long time, but this would probably do less for his career and writing endeavors than it would for the others.
sikandro @14: That is an interesting point, but it seems weird to punish a great local writer for being successful, doesn't it? (After a certain point, it felt strange to not give the Genius award to Sherman Alexie, for instance.) Looking at it a different way, maybe Stephenson's many fans will find something to enjoy in Zaher's poetry (Zaher and Stephenson share more themes than you'd initially suspect) and enjoy going to next year's APRIL Festival.
But thank you for bringing this up—these are definitely issues to discuss! We try to span a very large spectrum of artists—in literature alone, we've got a festival that's been around for two years, a poet who's published three books, and someone who's been writing fiction for a couple decades—in order to start exactly this kind of conversation.
BRAVO to all the nominees! We're thrilled to see dance dominate the new Performance category: Velocity Artists-in-Residence zoe|juniper + Amy O'Neal, Velocity Advisory Board member Pat Graney. Contrats also to Next Dance Cinema filmmakers Rodrigo Valenzuela + Ben Kasulke and Velocity music buddies Jherek Bischoff Jessika Kenney + Eyvind Kang.
Presumably, the same thing could have been said about Jonathan Raban, who won the Literature Award in 2006.
And I'm a little disappointed that the Performance nominees all come from dance/choreo - was there really not a single theatre or multi-media performance artist out there worthy of nomination this year? What about Desdemona Chiang? Scotto Moore? Mary Ewald? Nick Garrison? Aimee Bruneau? Trimpin? Rob Witmer?
I have no idea who Zach Weintraub is but when I saw his picture I immediately wanted to lick that cake off all his special places. And I don't even like cake!
All due respect to Katie Kate but WTF? She's only released one song in the last year and that song was uhhhh ok? I guess? She also released an album in 2011 that was uhhh ok? I guess? Meanwhile there are a lot of REALLY talented Seattle rappers and producers. Jake one is a freaking civic treasure! Also there is a lot of non-white Seattle hip hop talent. See: Keyboard Kid, Nacho Picasso, Dyme Def. Hell keep it in the family Stranger, DTTTC is doin it WAY bigger than Katie Kate. I love that The Stranger is representing local Hip Hop at the Genius Awards. But, C'mon guys! Shine some light on someone who's really out there doing it!
also i just have to know--why the one special cake for amy o'neal?!?!?!?
But thank you for bringing this up—these are definitely issues to discuss! We try to span a very large spectrum of artists—in literature alone, we've got a festival that's been around for two years, a poet who's published three books, and someone who's been writing fiction for a couple decades—in order to start exactly this kind of conversation.
Presumably, the same thing could have been said about Jonathan Raban, who won the Literature Award in 2006.
And I'm a little disappointed that the Performance nominees all come from dance/choreo - was there really not a single theatre or multi-media performance artist out there worthy of nomination this year? What about Desdemona Chiang? Scotto Moore? Mary Ewald? Nick Garrison? Aimee Bruneau? Trimpin? Rob Witmer?
Also, Katie Kate should have been on this list last year. Congratulations!