We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful A.V. Eichenbaum. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with A.V. below.

A.V., appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I’ve been doing this a long time for someone who hasn’t even hit 30 yet. I sort of hit the ground running, I guess. I started writing for a local college paper, The Gavilan Press, when I was 14. Jan was the editor at the time. I don’t think the paper’s still around these days. From there, I picked up work editing other students’ papers and as the Editor at my high school’s Art/Lit magazine.

By age 20, I’d been a reporter for 6 years and worked for three papers, not counting the magazine at Gilroy High. Crime, local politics. That was my bread and butter. But it doesn’t always pay well. I had to work odd jobs to get by — McDonald’s, UPS, that sort of thing. I was a barista during the 2016 election. I’d turned down extra work at the Gilroy Dispatch because it was easier to make money brewing a good cup of coffee than it was to ask local politicians what they thought about the potential rise of fascism or the California secession movement. Part of me regrets that, but I found work in Seattle easily enough once I saved up the cash to get up here.

I’d say the biggest obstacle I’ve seen facing journalists today is the tendency of older reporters and editors to look down on the younger crowd. They don’t want to teach the new kids anything and they refuse to listen to new ideas from anyone young. I’ve been gifted a unique perspective on this, as I took over as editor of a paper that’s nearly 50 years old at the age of 25 and had to work hard to turn it around. You can imagine how being half the age of your staff with twice the experience could go over poorly, but if it weren’t for the fresh blood the SGN would’ve gone under already.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

The SGN is one of the longest-running LGBTQ+ newspapers in the United States. It was started here in Seattle in 1974 by a man named Jim Tully. My predecessor, George Bakan, ran it from the mid 80s until his death in 2020. What we aim to do is elevate, amplify, and uplift the LGBTQIA+ community and keep our readers informed and reasonably up-to-date on anything that affects our community.

I’m an odd pick for this sort of work. If we’re just looking at LGBTQ identities, I’m a nonbinary omnisexual, which already presents some issues working with some of the old guard within the community. If we’re looking at everything else, I’ve been in journalism and working in theater, on podcasts, doing voice work and writing fiction for half of my life at this point. In college I studied journalism, but I majored in moral and political philosophy. I even picked up some modeling gigs, graphic design work, did some retail management, and worked at a small TV station for a short time. The running gag is that I’m the SGN’s Swiss Army Queer.

But given the incredible variety of issues we’ve faced in the past few years trying to keep this small, independent weekly newspaper afloat after decades of mismanagement, it turns out my grab bag of experience has really come in handy. We’ve been able to improve the quality of our coverage and engagement levels with our community on a shoestring budget, and at a time when the LGBTQIA+ community is both under fire and more outspoken than ever. I’m incredibly grateful every day that we’ve been able to make it this far and we can keep serving our community.

With Millennials, Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha being more comfortable and open about their Queerness than generations before them, our audience has grown and diversified, and with it so has the scope of what we cover at the SGN. Queerness transcends social status, age, race, nationality, and political ideology, and so any issue regarding human rights can affect the Queer community. Our following’s become a lot less niche.

What I’m really proud of is that we’ve been able to maintain a large portion of our longtime readers while engaging and growing our younger readership. It feels great to hear from readers of older generations and to have them tell me how impressed they are with how far the SGN’s come and it feels just as great to hear from college age kids who have just found us. We really are a paper that can be for anyone. We even have a podcasting network now. Both Radio SGN and Being Yourself Loudly have been a great for increasing SGN’s outreach.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I was really struggling at the end of 2020. I’d lost my job in shipping, my writing gigs weren’t paying at all, I was having trouble selling my paintings, and I thought I’d have to move back in with my dad two states away. On top of financial burdens, I’ve struggled with bipolar disorder and suicidality my whole life. Being strapped for cash is stressful for anyone, but I’ve got a part of my brain that tells me to shut everything down when I hit a wall. There’s something chemical in my head that — for whatever reason — tells me I deserve to be dead, and I have to prove it wrong every single day.

Having to get over that mental health hurdle without regular access to food or any certainty that I’d still have a roof over my head at the end of the month was exhausting and terrifying. I was seriously unwell, but I managed to pull myself together for an interview. I got hired as a part time reporter at the SGN, got bumped up to Associate Editor in the span of about two months, and by April of 2021 I was acting Editor-in-Chief. The place was in bad shape. No deadlines, no regular meetings to assign stories, and almost nobody actually reporting the news. I had to wear a lot of hats. I still do, but I’ve got the support of the team we built behind me now.

On the side, my short stories have been featured on The Ugly Radio podcast and I’ve been doing voice work for Lazarus Creative Company, I play Cal on their show The Scarab Archives and I’ve done some VO for their haunted house attractions out in Florida. The SGN’s been my main focus, though.

We’re the last in-print weekly newspaper in Seattle. The SGN and I came into contact at our lowest points respectively and I’ve been able to help build it back up. All of the obstacles we’ve come across here have been exhausting — professional rivalries, financial instability, and rebranding are only some of the things we had to deal with on top of putting out a newspaper every week — but looking at how far we’ve come in such a short time with almost no budget, I can honestly say the work’s helped build me back up, too.

I can’t say enough good things about my boss Angela Cragin, either. She inherited a failing newspaper from her father after he passed and kept it alive when I’m pretty sure most people would’ve let it die. If it weren’t for her constant support and open-mindedness, I don’t think I’d still be here and I know the SGN wouldn’t be.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I love seeing a project come into focus. I love the process. I’ve written scripts for plays and been lead singer for my band at the Catalyst Club. I’ve worked in TV and news and acted in weird, one-off ads for things like Hypnosis Bootcamp. I’ve helped throw together a short film or two in under 48 hours. I’ve been on D&D actual play podcasts, worked as a political analyst, and modeled independent artist streetwear. I’ve done all sorts of things. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. The most exhilarating part is when it takes on its own life in the chaos of the creative process and you can see it start to take shape. It’s like that old story about the sculptor’s apprentice. He tried over and over again to carve elephants like his mentor, but couldn’t do it. He didn’t see elephants in the stone, so he thought he was a failure. But when he came back to it and really started thinking about what he wanted to take shape, he started sculpting tigers. The moment you see the tiger in the stone, that’s where the magic happens for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sgn.org
• Instagram: @seattlegaynews / @photondetective
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seattlegaynews
• Twitter: @seattlegaynews / @photondetective
• Other: https://muckrack.com/av-eichenbaum

Image Credits
A.V. Eichenbaum at desk – Photo by Lindsey Anderson Eichenbaum and Maggie Bloodstone at Pride 2021 – Photo by Angela Cragin Tulpa – Painting by A.V. Eichenbaum Radio SGN podcast art – Designed by Mike Pham and A.V. Eichenbaum for SGN SGN Queer Love Valentine’s Day front Page 2023 – Art by A.V. Eichenbaum, Design by Mike Pham for SGN