The Deep End Friends Podcast

Jessica Rycheal is a Multi-disciplinary Storyteller, Photographer, and Creative Director from Macon, Georgia. Her work embraces vulnerability as an act of resistance, as she weaves themes of healing, resilience, and self-preservation across a loom of visual arts and spoken word. She has been featured in the Northwest African American Museum, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, NPR, Seattle Times, and...

C. Davida Ingram is an award-winning artist and civic leader born in Chicago and based in Seattle, Washington. Her artwork, curatorial projects, and writing all discuss race and gender via lens-based media, social practice, performance art, lyrical essay and installation art. Ingram has exhibited at the Frye Art Museum, Northwest African American Museum, Bridge Productions, Intiman Theater, Town H...

AZURE SAVAGE  is a black trans man in his senior year of high school. He wrote  You Failed Us  as a response to the racial injustice within the education system. After releasing the book, Savage has started to pursue speaking opportunities, workshops, and meeting directly with people working in Seattle Public Schools. He is working towards creating more understanding of the harm caused to students...

Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight. In 2018 she was named one of the 50 most influential feminists by Bitch Magazine. She is the founder of Babecamp, a 4-week online course designed to help women who are ready to break up with diet culture. In 2012, Tovar edited the anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion and in 2018 Th...

Born and raised in Queens, NY, Eric Darnell Pritchard is an award-winning writer, cultural critic, and an Associate Professor of English at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. A self-described "Black queer feminist alchemist," he writes and teaches about literacy and rhetoric and their intersections with fashion, beauty, popular culture, identity, and power. He is author of  F...

David Luis Glisch-Sánchez is an award winning teacher and Assistant Professor of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Buffalo, in Buffalo, New York. His work as a scholar and teacher focuses broadly in the areas of the sociology of emotions, Latinx studies, women of color feminisms, queer of color critique, and public policy and the law. He is also founder of Soul Support Life...

Kwame Morrow is a husband, father of three, son, and brother. He is an active member of his community, and an urn in which his ancestors reside. He describes himself primarily as a soul having a human experience. Kwame earned his BA in Business Administration Finance from The Evergreen State College with a focus on international trade. He graduated from Goddard college with his Master's of Educati...

This Episode was recorded live at Langston Hughes from We Out Here, a festival of black excellence curated by Michael B. Maine.  Nyema Clark is farm boss at Nurturing Roots on Beacon Ave & S Graham St. in Beacon Hill. A native to south Seattle, Nyema's entrepreneurial chops shine in her efforts as a beginning urban farmer. Proprietor of Avenue South, a line of natural health and beauty products, N...

Live from We Out Here Part 1, a festival of black excellence curated by Michael B. Maine. The Deep End interviewed Inye Wokoma. Inye Wokoma's family has lived in the Central District since the 1940s. As a journalist, filmmaker and visual artist, he explores themes of identity, community, history, land, politics and power through the lens of personal and visual narratives. His work is informed by a...

Esmy Jimenez. Born in Mexico but raised in rural Washington, Esmy Jimenez is a multimedia journalist and writer. After attending USC in Los Angeles, she moved to Seattle where she was a 2016 apprentice for The Seattle Globalist.  Esmy's work has appeared in High Country News, the Washington Post's The Lily, National Native News, and NPR. She is additionally a Maynard Fellow and Next Gen Radio alum...

Join us for a conversation about motherhood with two amazing black doulas and activists literally bringing us life! Rokea Jones is a Seattle Native and a mother to her brilliant two year old daughter. Rokea is currently a Community Based Outreach Doula serving the African-American community at Open Arms Perinatal Services. She is also a certified PALS doula serving the Seattle area. Rokea is a cer...

Lama Rod Owens was officially recognized by the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism after receiving his teaching authorization from his root teacher the Venerable Lama Norlha Rinpoche when he completed the traditional 3-year silent retreat program at Kagyu Thubten Chöling Monastery (KTC) outside of New York City.  It was during this time that he dealt with years of past pain and trauma and found forg...

K. Wyking Garrett is the President & CEO of Africatown Community Land Trust and chief strategist for the Africatown community development initiative in Seattle, WA. A third generation community builder and recognized change agent, Wyking designs programs and initiatives that catalyze, mobilize and activate communities for policy change and social impact. He has been a co-catalyst for several Seatt...

Chef Tarik Abdullah is a chef, artist, innovator, and community activist. His culinary creations honor traditions using spices spanning from North Africa, South East Asia and the Mediterranean; and inspired by the tastes and flavors of his childhood. Growing up in a Muslim family and broader community where ethnic foods were the norm, his artistry comes through not only in his food, but in his eve...

Grammy-winning Seattle double bass player (Macklemore & Ryan Lewis), composer and vocalist, Evan Flory-Barnes, is a sorcerer. Able to concoct large, swelling scores with symphonies following his precise baton or manifest nuanced, delicately woven narratives on his solo upright bass, the Emerald City virtuoso offers elegant, honest, approachable and magical music. With deep influences in hip-hop's...

S H A R O N  H. C H A N G is an award-winning Author Photographer Activist with a lens on racism, social justice and the Asian American diaspora. She is author of the critically acclaimed academic book Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children In a Post-Racial World and her newly released memoir, Hapa Tales and Other Lies: A Mixed Race Memoir About the Hawai'i I Never Knew . Her writing has a...

Georgia Stewart McDade, a Louisiana native who has lived in Seattle more than half her life, loves reading and writing. As a youngster she wrote and produced plays for her siblings and neighbors and collaborated with church youth to write plays for special occasions. Earning a Bachelor of Arts from Southern University, Master of Arts from Atlanta University, and Ph. D. from University of Washingto...

Dr. Ersula J. Ore is the Lincoln Professor of Ethics in The School of Social Transformation and Assistant Professor of African & African American Studies, and Rhetoric at Arizona State University. Her work as a race critical rhetorician maps the suasive strategies of aggrieved communities as they operate within a post-emancipation historical context. In Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric & American Iden...

Ebo Barton is a Black and Filipino, Transgender and Non-Binary, poet and educator.  As a representative of Seattle, they've been on 4 National Slam Teams and participated at 3 Individual World Poetry Slams.  Their most notable poetry slam accolade is placing 5th in the world in 2016. Ebo curated and directed, How to Love THIS Queer Body of Color: An Unapology and wrote and directed the award-winni...

Naa Akua , Citizen University, Poet-in-Residence, is a queer poet, emcee, and actor. They are, poetry teacher at The Northwest School and WITS writer-in-residence at Franklin High School. Intentionality, love, and encouragement is the focus of Akua's work that can be found in tracks like "The Elements" or "Till It All Goes Away" from their mixtape Odd(s) Balance (on SoundCloud.com ). Recently, Naa...

Gerry Ebalaroza-Tunnell is the founder of Co3 Consulting: Co-Creating Cohesive Communities. She is a Doctoral candidate in the department of Transformative Studies and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies and identifies as a Pacific Islander born and raised on the island of O'ahu, Hawaii. Gerry is a dynamic educator who co-mingles humor and philosophy, making her teachings...

Amanda Johnston earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter (Argus House Press). Her poetry and interviews have appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them, Callaloo, Poetry, Kinfolks Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Muzzle, Pluck...

Michael B. Maine.  Seattle-based photographer and creative director. He combines an understanding of business, art, and social systems to bring about awareness and action around issues such as homelessness, media literacy, and human trafficking. Committed to volunteer service in the community, Michael is currently the board president of both Reel Grrls , a youth media program that teaches young pe...

The Deep End is committed to youth empowerment. Our interns have been with us from day 1, running tech, developing our social media, and lending their voices to our content. Special shout out to Emma Reid and Aisha Al Amin who have been the primary hosts of our youth segment The Caring Corner with features from Zaria Ali, Eyerusalem Mesele, Nasra Ali, and Layla Mohumad. Emma and Aisha have decided...

Quenton Baker is a poet and educator from Seattle. His current focus is anti-blackness and the afterlife of slavery. His work has appeared in Jubilat, Vinyl, Apogee, Pinwheel, The James Franco Review, and Cura. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of the 2016 James W. Ray Venture Project award and the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. He is the author of This Glitte...