Articles

Award-winning features on the arts, profiles, lifestyles

Washington Newspaper Publishers Association Award for "Best Personality Profile" 

"Islander took risk with beans and built a coffee empire"
In his kitchen overlooking Quartermaster Harbor, Jim Stewart, the founder of Seattle’s Best Coffee, grinds coffee beans from his farm in Costa Rica. The kettle whistles. Stewart pours the steaming water over the grounds, using the drip-brew method to fill a narrow, well-worn thermos. There’s not an espresso machine or coffeemaker in sight. Stewart takes his coffee black, in a demitasse. Article 

Washington Newspaper Publishers Association Award for "Best Lifestyle Feature" 

"Living Vibrantly in the Face of Adversity: Islander learns to live with cancer"
One late afternoon last month, while the spun-gold of autumn’s fading light filtered through the madrona trees, a Los Angeles-based film crew gathered at the home of Phil Volker on Wax Orchard Road. The location, worthy of starring in a film, set the scene for a joyous reunion of the director, crew, cast and friends of the award-winning documentary, “Phil’s Camino,” on the eve of the film’s presentation at the Port Townsend Film Festival. Article

"Weaving: a silent oratory and metaphor for life"
Outside Suzanne Hubbard’s light-filled studio stands a grand Douglas fir, impressive in size, unusual in its multi-trunked, many-armed form. Inside stands a grand Swedish fir floor loom, impressive in size, unusual in its rarity. Between the numerous strands of the white weft, Hubbard hand-weaves the warp of colorful wool threads, a year-long process to create an abstract expression of the tree. Yet for Hubbard, the final tapestry will be as much about the weaving itself as it will be a visual meditation on the fractal patterns she sees in nature, in the wholeness of life. Article

"Islander pens moving memoir"
Island author Catherine Johnson opens her moving memoir, “Finding Mercy in This World,” with a journal entry she wrote while walking the Camino de Santiago three years ago. She eloquently articulates her experience traveling the path taken by countless pilgrims for 1,500 years as entering “an invisible, timeless, ever-flowing river of souls” seeking what may already be all around them, what they, and she, are simply part of — the “great Mystery.” Article

"Local sculptor draws on geology as her work dot the country" Julie Speidel’s studio sits on a rolling piece of land that runs along the spine of the island. When the Vashon glacier finally relinquished its frozen hold on Puget Sound 15,000 years ago, it deposited in its wake a scattering of geologic calling cards — irregular boulders or glacial erratics. And it left one for Speidel. Article