Writing in Wartime
UWT student Patrick Hardin’s stories are fast-paced and often violent; they tackle issues of moral ambiguity and the effects of being quickly plunged back into the “real” world after spending time in a...
View ArticleWhere’d You Go, Reality?
Let’s face it, the Pacific Northwest is easy to make fun of. We are the low-hanging fruit of regional comic relief. Where else in our great…
View Article“Sand”&“Notes on a Brooklyn Crucifixion” by Rachel Ervin
Sand In the summer sanctuary of my youth, our freckled faces and rippled wrists; our brown-skinned backs and makeshift suits staggered around the aggregate pool. The…
View ArticleSomething Good from Fen Wik Ren
If you haven’t yet heard of Fen Wik Ren, don’t be alarmed. They’re a Portland band set to play this year’s Squeak & Squawk Festival on…
View ArticleHoly Script! Bible Quiz comes to Tacoma
This is a story of belonging. A teenage girl finds herself directionless when her parents divorce and her mother lapses into alcoholism. Her time is spent navigating her new life between an empty house...
View ArticleReturn to a South You’ve Seen Before
The saying is, the hotter the climate, the crazier the story. Some of my favorite stories are set in the south: Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” and her iconic Their Eyes Were Watching God and...
View ArticleFalling Back
It’s 4:57 p.m. on Sunday, November 3rd, and in approximately 15 minutes our city will be plunged into darkness. They say that the time change each spring helps us to save daylight, and therefore more...
View ArticleA Tacoma Valentine: Joe
I haven’t always loved Tacoma. I would get off work from Seattle or Spokane or San Francisco and make my way along I-5, the top of the Dome glittering and beckoning like a magnetic lasso, drawing me to...
View ArticleOreos, radio, and saving the cat: an interview with Ira Glass
I had little sleep the night before I interviewed Ira Glass, radio show host and producer of This American Life. The phone interview was to take place at 2pm on a Monday – 5pm at his office in New York...
View ArticleThe karaoke files: week one, Larry
The light from the monitors flash blue and a woman with wet hair and a bikini appears on screen. Her head tilts all the way back like she can’t get enough of all that hair on her shoulders and a...
View ArticleWeek 3: Veterans
Robert Sunday night, and our table of two had become a table of four. Robert, a 67 year old Vietnam veteran and the back-up dancer for Serena from my first night at the Westgate, migrated over to my...
View ArticleSatisfy your cinephile at Destiny City Film Festival
You’re creating a playlist for Tacoma and it can only be 29 songs long. Quick, what’s it going to be? You want some local representation, of course — maybe a little Neko Case, some Nightgowns, a ditty...
View ArticleThe karaoke files: week 10, get high
This is the conclusion in a three part series, The Karaoke Files, set in The Westgate Bar and Grill in Tacoma’s West End neighborhood. The events written about took place over ten weeks. Some names...
View ArticleRadical Roots: talking Home with Justin Wadland
Over breakfast one morning, my husband and I were talking about the town of Home, Washington, an area on the Key Peninsula that was founded as an experimental anarchist colony in 1896. Having just come...
View ArticleTacoma’s magical paths: Puget Creek
The stairs to the bottom of the gulch were coated with light sand, like they were just steps away from the ocean. I had wanted to hike this trail for years; its entrance tucked behind a faded sign on...
View ArticleWashed ashore: Kon Tiki and a discussion of lost debris
Just as concerns of radiation reaching us from the Fukushima disaster waned, a giant piece of concrete parked itself on the shores of the Olympic National Forest just outside Forks, Washington, in...
View ArticleApril 2015: a letter from the Post Defiance editors
It’s April, Tacoma, and along with the blooming flowers and allergy season, Post Defiance is turning over a new leaf, too. For nearly four years, we have done our best to provide Tacoma with a critical...
View ArticleHomeless in Tacoma, part one: Waiting in line
On an early Wednesday morning, I walk onto the campus of the new Nativity House location on South Yakima. It is cold and drizzling; crowds of people huddle beneath a tarp outside of the hospitality...
View ArticleHomeless in Tacoma, part two: moving beyond reaction
Read “Homeless in Tacoma, part 1: Waiting in line” When I was eight years old, I went shopping with my mother on Christmas Eve. I grew up in the Mojave Desert, where the weather is harsh by any...
View Article30 films in the 253
For the past few years, local filmmakers have poured their grit, spit, and tears into producing short films for the 72 hour film competition, hosted by the Grand Cinema. And if you’ve read our story on...
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