Behind the Emerald Curtain: Megan Christy

Welcome to our new series: Behind the Emerald Curtain!

Earlier this year, we launched the “Meet Our Rainmakers!” series, featuring readers whose contributions help us amplify the authentic voices of the South End. Now, with this new series, we’ll continue to meet members of our community, but this time, we’re peering behind the curtain to take a look at the people who bring the Emerald to life each day.

Stay tuned for more Rainmaker and Behind the Emerald Curtain mini-profiles, where you can learn more about the communities that support and create the Emerald.

Want to be a Rainmaker? Head to our Kindful webpage to support BIPOC-led media in South Seattle with a monthly contribution of any amount.

Already a Rainmaker? Thank you!

Megan Christy

Megan Christy, the Emerald's digital editor, lives in White Center, a South End neighborhood (or "census-designated place") that reminds her of where she grew up, in a predominantly Latino and Vietnamese neighborhood in Southern California. "It almost feels like being home," she says, with phở shops and taco stands operating side by side, representing a cross-section of communities. She also witnesses many multigenerational households like her own: She lives with her partner, her mother, and two dogs, Potato and Baloo. Along with its multicultural, multigenerational characteristics, Christy says the neighborhood's unincorporated status sometimes makes it more resilient. "It has a much stronger community vibe, because we don't have city resources. … You see a lot of community-based orgs stepping in, filling in the gaps, and really advocating for particularly the marginalized in the communities." Of this place rich with stories, history, and community, she says, "I'm so lucky to be a part of them, to be part of it."

Christy calls her path to the Emerald "classic millennial stuff": navigating the Great Recession, seeing Big Tech grow rapidly, and, after college, bouncing around trying to find a good career fit. Her partner's career connections led them from California to Seattle, where Christy took the editing certificate program at the University of Washington. Her time in the course overlapped with the pandemic and the George Floyd protests. "So I was looking around, trying to find out more about what I could use my skills for," she says, when she stumbled across Omari Salisbury's livestreams and saw the Emerald listed as a partner. "And then I found the Emerald, and that was like a true breath of fresh air," she said. She reached out to ask if the Emerald could use her editing skills, and founder Marcus Harrison Green brought her on board, first as a volunteer and then as an editor.

Four years later, the Emerald's existence hinges on her work as digital editor handling all the behind-the-scenes tasks of publishing content to the website and social media; in her own words, "taking all the work of our great contributors and just making sure it's in its best state possible." Since 2020, she's read "just about every story" and seen several staff transitions — and behind that change, she sees a silver lining. "Even though I know change is really scary … you really get to see people's strengths and personalities and passions, in particular," she said. "It's never the same. … You get a glimpse into [each person's] really beautiful corner of the South End that I don't think any other publication can do quite as well."

Christy's dogs have also had a hand (or paw) in creating Emerald content. As an introvert, Christy says having a dog can be helpful — an eager, tail-wagging magnet for attention in social situations, a quality she's wielded as a way to remind people to vote. This began with the late Bella, an honorary Emeraldite whose photo helped remind Emerald readers to drop off their ballots on Election Day — even in pouring rain. Now, Potato has "taken up the mantle" of encouraging people to vote — and is enthusiastic about the greetings he receives at the ballot box.

"I feel like all of us at the Emerald are storytellers in some capacity," Christy says, and that focus on storytelling is also reflected in her life outside the Emerald. She's a member of the Northwest Editors Guild, which fosters community among editors in the Pacific Northwest. And at home, Christy loves to play video games and is particularly interested in their storytelling potential. She's experimenting with her own video game writing, and she sees parallels between the storytelling that's possible in video games and the storytelling that happens at the Emerald — people want to see themselves represented richly in reality and fantasy. "You are seeing this push for representation and more stories that reflect people's lived experiences," she said. "We want to see, you know, Black elves and Asian hobbits." 

Christy, a granddaughter of an incarcerated Japanese American during WWII, finds representation in stories about immigration, an essential part of her history that she appreciates seeing reflected in activism and journalism. She pays attention to Tsuru for Solidarity, which describes itself as a "nonviolent, direct action project of Japanese American social justice advocates working to end detention sites and support front-line immigrant and refugee communities that are being targeted by racist, inhumane immigration policies." And some of her favorite Emerald stories involve the immigrant experience. When Christy first found the Emerald, Cynthia Green's profile on Toshiko Grace Hasegawa, who's also a mixed-race Japanese American, caught her eye. And Lola E. Peters' op-ed "The Complex Journey of a Transitional Immigrant: Words for Rahwa" was "one of the ones that just made me really want to work for the Emerald — for sure sealed the deal," Christy says. "I remember clicking on and then reading Lola's piece about her journey growing up in the States as an immigrant. … Even though she's from a different ethnic community, it mirrored so much of what my grandmother experienced when she came over." 

Because Christy reads nearly every Emerald article, her continued list of stories she's appreciated over the years is long and varied, from a piece on a Black-owned dog-training collaborative to Oliver Miska's recent Back to School series. And in 2021, Christy helped kick-start the fiction section with a story of her own. Over the years, these diverse stories from myriad contributors have created an online presence that Christy says can be hard to describe on paper, but is truly special — "a multifaceted gem of a space on the internet."

And Christy’s behind-the-scenes work polishing that gem helps it shine all the more brightly.