Seattle Pride’s Inaugural Youth Voices Writing Contest Winners

We're thrilled to showcase the winners of Seattle Pride’s inaugural Youth Voices Writing Contest, which highlights the incredible talent of young LGBTQIA2S+ writers. These budding storytellers and poets captivate with their unique voices, their bold perspectives, and the raw emotional power – inspiring us all with their words.

The contest saw an impressive array of submissions from passionate young people, each bringing their unique voice and creativity to the page.

“With this contest we see young LGBTQIA+ writers express themselves in ways that are both brave and authentic,” said Seattle Pride Executive Director Patti Hearn. “Their words are reflections of the courage it takes to be seen and heard. It’s inspiring to witness these emerging voices, and I can’t wait to see how these writers use art to shape the future.”

First place winners in each category receive $150 and gift certificates to Charlie’s Queer Books. All winners receive tickets to Mary Poppins at The 5^th Avenue Theatre, a gift certificate from Cupcake Royale, a gift from Open Books, A Poem Emporium, and a special Seattle Pride swag bag.

Enjoy the winning submissions below:

1st Prize, Poetry: Alec Wechsler

1st Prize, Prose: Lucía Villarreal González

2nd Prize: Nick Nevils (Poetry)

3rd Prize: Irisa Treng (Prose)

1st Prize, Poetry: Alec Wechsler

Alec Wechsler’s winning poem, “Park Sitting,” is a beautiful reflection on stillness, intimacy, and the quiet moments that provide an escape from life’s chaos. In simple yet poignant language, Wechsler invites us into a peaceful moment shared between two people, where even the rain becomes part of a soothing rhythm. The poem captures the longing for connection and the desire for a space where vulnerability is embraced. "Paper lets you become your best insight," Alec shared about the significance of writing in his life, and his poem exemplifies that truth, offering a glimpse into the power of art to express emotions.

Wechsler’s view of Pride mirrors the themes in his poetry: connection, support, and the beauty of shared humanity. As he put it, Pride is about "people...coming together and fighting for each other," and his work underscores the importance of these bonds in a world often filled with challenges. Wechsler views Pride as “a true representation of humanity” and shares that he “could not be more proud to be part of this revolutionary movement.”

1st Prize, Prose: Lucía Villarreal González

Lucía Villarreal González’s prose entry, “Listening to My Heart: Coming Out as Told Through Music,” brings readers along on her journey of self-acceptance, her relationship with her family, and their “awakenings with queerness.” Her storytelling is vivid and emotional, as she juxtaposes difficult and joyful moments where music becomes both a lifeline and a symbol of self-discovery.

For Villarreal González, writing is a way to process and share emotions that are often hard to articulate. "Through writing I can express emotions and experiences that I otherwise would be unable to," she explains. In her essay, we see the tension between fear and hope, and the realization that people can evolve and grow, just as she has through her own coming out journey.

Villarreal González describes Pride as "a celebration of our joint struggle as a community toward liberation." Her story not only reflects that struggle but also the joy that comes from embracing authenticity. She says, “Seeing people embrace the truest versions of themselves in such an unapologetic fashion is truly inspiring.”

Listening to my Heart: Coming Out as Told Through Music

Lucía Villarreal González

Realizing I was bisexual was like putting on glasses for the first time. All of a sudden there was word that captured all of the complicated feelings that I had been experiencing. I realized this while lying on my bedroom floor reading Percy Jackson. Having just bought the third book in the series, eleven-year-old me was too impatient to go all the way to my bed. I decided to splay out on the cool floor, my stomach and hip bones pressing into the welcoming carpet. A perfect replica of a teenager reading a magazine on a cheery 2000s teen film. I was on the first chapter when there was a mention of a band called Green Day. The name stuck out to me, glowing and reaching out.

It was as if I was caught in a snare with no chance of escape. Curiosity won me over and I looked the band up on Spotify and hit play. The abrasive clash of the plastic pick striking the steel strings was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. I was absorbed by the music; the book I had anxiously been waiting to read reduced to nothing but an afterthought. I scrolled through their albums as Spotify auto-played the band’s most popular songs. My hands were shaking with excitement while reading the song titles on their album Dookie. My phone shook against my hand, blurring the lines of text causing my finger to slip and click on a song called “Coming Clean”. By this point I had decided to look up the lyrics of the songs to get a better grasp of what this revolutionary music had to say. I quickly switched to the new song, my eyes scanning over the lyrics in time with the song. “Secrets collecting dust, but never forget / Skeletons come to life in my closet”. The lyrics proposed a swarming secret the singer was struggling with. I checked the song description to see if there was any mention of what this great secret was.

That’s when I encountered the word bisexual for the first time.

The short paragraph was surrounded by bright popups all clamoring for my attention, but all I could focus on was that word. What is that? I sat leaning over my phone, my face scrunched in confusion. I was normally good with vocabulary, and it annoyed me to not know what the word meant. Suddenly, I remembered the internet existed, and I could look it up. The white light of my screen reflected onto my face as I was illuminated with knowledge. The word described exactly how I had felt my entire life.

Fingers thumping against my delicate screen, I frantically researched as much as I could about bisexuality. Could it be? Were there other people that felt the same as way that I did? I had always felt alone in my feelings, like no one would ever be able to understand me, as if I were stranded on a desert island with my feelings swirling around me like a tempest. I consumed article after article and realized that there was a whole community that perceived the world just like me. My veins filled with warmth that threatened to exude out. I wanted to share this with everyone I knew, yet I couldn’t. I had always found boys cute, so I never worried about what my parent’s thought about queer people. Now, I wished I had paid extra attention. As the song says, “I finally figured out myself for the first time” but “Mom and Dad'll never understand/What's happening to me”. Or so I thought.

The first conversation I ever had about sexuality was with my dad. It was late at night in December, and we were sitting on opposite sides of the couch in the living room eating dinner while the homey room rang in silence. All the lights were off with just a small, scented candle that my mom had lit before she fell asleep to get rid of the smell of chicken casting dancing shadows on the walls. We were both covered in fuzzy blankets that tickle when the fur is at just the right angle. My dad had recently bought new speakers, so they were blasting all hours of the day, the thump thump thump of the bass shaking the bones of the house. His playlist titled Favorite Oldies was on which consisted of his favorite 80s songs. As a groovy guitar line mixed with harmonica floated out of the speakers, my dad perked up, acknowledging the music for the first time that evening. In a cool, casual tone he told me about the song called “Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club. The smooth cadence of his speech changed into excitement as he started describing the lead singer of the band, Boy George. He explained that he thought he was one of the coolest people alive when he was a young teenager. He tried explaining his fashion style, but what he described sounded more like a fashionable alien from Star Wars than a real person. When I told him that, he gave up trying to use his words and rescinded to just looking up a picture on Google. As strangely as he described his style, it was even weirder in real life. I held back giggles as I scrolled through the picture.

My amusement quickly ended as I saw the news headline on the picture I stopped on. “Boy George Opens Up About Being Gay” read the screen. My heart started beating loud enough for me to hear it pounding through my ears. Did my dad know his idol was gay? I felt as if I were locked in place, my muscles refusing to comply with my brain’s orders as I contemplated the two options: either my dad didn’t know he was gay or, the option I was hoping for, he knew he was gay and still thought he was the coolest person on the planet. My dad, noticing my freeze, read the screen to figure out what caused it. He lit up with a soft smile, “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he’s gay. I think it’s sick that he never hid his sexuality during his career and instead embraced it,” his voice never switching out of the comforting low tone I’d grown up with. He continued to talk about how it was inspirational to see an openly gay artist, but I wasn’t processing anything he was saying, his words like tumbleweeds in the barren dessert my brain had become. All I could focus on was my dad knowing that his teenage idol was gay and still idolizing him. I could imagine him accepting gay people now in the 21^st century but knowing that he hasn’t cared about sexuality since he was a teenager growing up in a deeply catholic country gave me hope that he would extend the same grace to me when I eventually came out.

If I was confused about what my dad thought about queer people, I was even more conflicted about what my mom’s stance was. She came from a religious, conservative family where, to my knowledge, no one was queer. In January, she was driving me to school like any other mundane morning with the two of us grumbling about how cold the car was and turning the heat way too high before inevitably bringing it back down, struggling to find the balance like we were two little girls on a seesaw. Normally my mom lets me pick the music on the way to school but that day she asked to listen to her favorite artist, a Spanish group called Mecano. Rolling my eyes, I agreed while mentally preparing myself for bad 80s pop with cheesy lyrics about as shallow as a kiddie pool. As I fished for her phone in her pocketless purse she said she wanted me to play a specific song by them called “Sólo Soy Una Persona”. The chintzy clock ticking opening backed with piano made me regret agreeing to suffer through this song. But then my mom started explaining, the words escaping her mouth like her lips were dam walls that finally cracked under the stress of the water. She told how this song came out when she was in her early twenties and that the lyrics caused her to have important moments of self-reflection about her biases.

Prior to her saying this, I had just been listening to the instrumental with no care as to what the lyrics said. Just as I did when listening to “Coming Clean”, my fingers dashed across her screen as I looked up the lyrics to see what she was talking about. The lyrics are about how people are just that, people, and that there’s nothing that can take their basic human rights away. I was confused, how did this cause my mom to go over her biases? Sparing a glance away from the road to see my furrowed brows, my mom saved me from confusion by explaining that the song was meant to be about the constricting roles assigned to men and women by society. Apparently, this was something they discussed in their interviews (that my mom watched all of because she was a certified fangirl). Then she dropped a bombshell.

In those interviews the band emphasized that this song also ‘applied to the discussion of sexual orientation’ (as my mom put it) and that they believed that all people are equal regardless of what gender they liked. This was when she felt it important to point out that she never hated gay people, she just had a mild dislike for them because of what her pastor and parents would say. “Anyways, I listened to the song and interviews and realized I was being dumb and gay people are just like us, so I decided to support them fully from then on!” is how my mom chose to end that topic. She then asked me what the lunch option at school that day was. I replied on autopilot, my head was spinning while it replayed moments from the conversation like a sports highlight reel. I never expected to have such a casual conversation about sexuality with my mom, or any family member.

I was stuck at a crossroads; I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. On one hand, I couldn’t believe that my mom’s favorite band saying that gay people were equal was all it took to erase years of religious homophobia. It sounded straight out of a bad 2000s sitcom. On the other hand, I felt like walking on a cloud because of how delighted I was that she was supportive. I struggled to speak, my mouth a lead weight refusing to move and my facial muscles were as taught as a tripwire. In the end, the two impulses balanced each other out and I managed to act like a normal person and continue the new conversation. That didn’t stop me from screaming into my pillow, raving like a madman when I got home from school though. Now, five years after the interactions I look back at them as the first steppingstones of my journey towards coming out.

I came out to my parents and brother when I was thirteen, and their response was incredible. They treated me with nothing but love and respect and have continued to support me. But this is still just the beginning of my story.

Last year, my mom and I met up with my favorite cousin who was visiting Seattle on a work trip. We went to a small pizza place in Belltown. The air was heavy with grease as we chatted while waiting for our food. The decorative gargoyles’ gaze tracked my every movement as I looked around.

The topic of conversation had finally left the stilted polite small talk and my cousin was now talking about what podcasts she enjoyed. She said that she had been particularly enjoying the Joe Rogan Experience as she felt he expressed ‘the real truth without fear of upsetting the delicate left and their unexplainable genders’. I felt a punch to my stomach when she said that. Logically I knew that she grew up in a conservative family, but I had been grasping onto the hope that she was different and accepting like a life raft. I felt my gaze blur with disappointment, my fingers slipping on the raft. As I started to drown, the universe decided to play a sick joke by playing “Coming Clean” over the speakers.

That was the first and last time I have ever heard that song outside of my own headphones. As I heard Billie Joe Armstrong’s voice sing about figuring himself out I recalled all of the acceptance that I have received from countless people. Remembering all of my positive experiences from my family helped calm me down. That’s when I decided I had to write my experiences down in case I ever needed solid proof that people can evolve and confront their biases and accept me. The comforting lull of the melody thrumming in my ears carried me through the last steps of dinner without incident. Six months later I saw her congratulate my newly out cousin and her girlfriend on coming out, smiling like the sun shone out of her teeth and larger than I had ever seen her in my 15 years of knowing her. I wonder what changed her mind and if music played a role. Hopefully one day I can be honest with her and we can have an open conversation as I have with the rest of my family.

2nd Prize: Nick Nevils (Poetry)

I Wish You Could See Me

Nick Nevils

This relationship means so much to me,

But I crave that you would see,

I covet to just be me.

Envision your body like it is a cage,

Your whole life is an outrage,

That this is not me on a stage.

In your eyes, I may be a disgrace,

But in my heart, it is not a phase,

It is not me ensnared in a twisting maze.

I seek to ask the truth from you,

Ask if you see my bright blue hews,

Or if you have opted for indecision’s ruse.

I need you to know that deep inside,

To follow myself, I must abide,

And that I am not a soul divided.

I need you to know that on the outside,

I am not merely trying to hide,

This is just me showing my pride.

I know you yearn for it to all be décor,

That this is me trying to explore,

But no, this is me at my very core.

This is not me trying to deceive,

It is me aiming to achieve,

What I wholeheartedly believe.

I hope that one day you can conceive,

As it would make me so relieved,

As it would create between us a stronger weave.

One day you will see me as I truly am,

That I am not trapped in a beaver’s dam,

That this is not me confined in failure’s hands.

I need you to know that deep inside,

To follow myself, I must abide,

And that I am not a soul divided.

I need you to know that on the outside,

I am not merely trying to hide,

This is just me showing my pride.

3rd Prize: Irisa Treng (Prose)

MIAMI TIME-TRAVEL

by Irisa Treng

how selfish of me to think everything was mine. the last time i went to florida i still thought i was a little girl, giggling uncontrollably in the back of a car as we drove past crocodile warnings and burger houses surrounded by bacteria-infested lakes. my parents called it a sugar high. the sky an oven and the sidewalks little tropical islands too far from shadow, i said the sunburn outline of a wrist scrunchie is just how the sun chose to paint me. now regurgitating in the back of an ice cream parlor. the vomit too pink to be gross. it could go like this: i blink, and shit rewinds. i wouldn’t need to gag on adhesive sugar nor cover my stomach nor argue the validity of fighting in the gender war. they did entire studies on ducks. i feel like my study on myself is never enough. i want to love hard the way a duckling loves hard, swimming alone in a pond until a kind human walks by and it imprints all or nothing. why can’t my short hair be the proof of wanting, my workouts the bamboo shoots of commitment? but it could go like this: i grow old, and everyone forgets about it. i take the pizza recipe and make it this time. i marry a man and sell the house. i marry a man because gay marriage is still legal. i want to lounge unafraid in pools so i retire on a cruise ship and sneak out in the hallways after curfew to dance. i want to be rich the way a salesman does, with something to sell. but some not-girl said years ago this entire trade was theirs. how could anyone else lay claim to my body? i blink, and nothing rewinds, because nothing has gone to shit yet. giggling for fifteen minutes only on lemonade juice, backseat and hopeful. giggling with my boyfriend as we wipe up the pink goo. giggling when i kiss him hard.