Mark Van Streefkerk

1 week ago | southseattleemerald.org | Mark Van Streefkerk

On behalf of the South Seattle Emerald, Happy Pride! 🌈For queer and trans communities, it's been an exhausting year. There have been executive orders that roll back protections for trans people and recent anti-LGBTQ+ protests in our own gayborhoods. It's an all-hands-on-deck moment for protecting some of our most vulnerable populations, especially queer and trans People of Color.

2 weeks ago | southseattleemerald.org | Mark Van Streefkerk

LGBTQ+ youth in South King County have a new resource for peer support and community. The King County Library System and Capitol Hill-based Lambert House have been cohosting youth-led support groups in underserved areas over the last few years at library branches in White Center, Federal Way, Auburn, Covington, and Renton. A new group started at the Skyway branch in April.

2 months ago | southseattleemerald.org | Mark Van Streefkerk

On a drizzly Sunday afternoon in February, the meeting room at the Columbia City library branch was bustling with chatter and activity as volunteers with backgrounds as lawyers, paralegals, notaries, case workers and social workers helped around 100 people who sought guidance about changing their name or gender marker on legal documents. Hosted by the Gender Justice League (GJL), the Feb.

Feb 15, 2025 | southseattleemerald.org | Mark Van Streefkerk

Around the dinner table at "Covenant." From left to right: Violet (Deja Culver), Ruthie (Kaila Towers), Avery (Simone Alene), and Mama (Felicia Loud). In York Walker's Covenant, hell is real. So is the devil. Making its Seattle debut at ArtsWest from Feb. 6 to March 2, this southern gothic thriller transports us to a small town in Georgia in the 1930s, where five characters come to grips with the price of their secrets and shame, with some delightfully unholy turns.

Dec 23, 2024 | southseattleemerald.org | Mark Van Streefkerk

Arts, Culture, & Community editor Mark Van Streefkerk interviews reporter Sarah Goh at the Emerald's Ninth Birthday Party on Aug. 12, 2023. The Emerald will be observing a team-wide wellness pause from Dec. 20 to Jan. 6, and most publishing will be on hiatus, with the exceptions of four pieces, of which this is one, wherein editors look back at 2024 and some of the work that made the Emerald shine. 2024 gave us another year of incredible arts and community events in the South End.