Jeff Kirby • Jeff Kirby
Not to be confused with the Jeff Kirby who cheated on Jeopardy!
I grew up in Bellevue, WA when it was still just a modest woodland suburb of Seattle, happily playing and building unsafe tree forts in the forest across the street from my neighborhood. Then, in the late 1990s, Microsoft built their campus down the road. Money flowed in, all the trees were cut down to make room for expensive houses, and I went from having plenty and feeling content to being surrounded by opulence and thinking I didn’t have enough. Thankfully, I listened to a Built to Spill cassette in high school and realized that shopping at thrift stores and living DIY was way cooler than aching for unnecessary wealth. I left Bellevue convinced it was a terrible place, and was happy when my parents finally left the city several years later. My brother and his family moved back to Bellevue recently. Though I was skeptical at first, it has proved to be a nice enough place to visit, if only for the exceptional Sichuanese restaurants that accompanied its transformation into the largest majority-minority city in the state. If there’s anything that brings me joy about the city of my childhood now, it’s the thought of those old, rich white people who poisoned my young mind with affluence complaining about all the minorities who are finally giving the place some culture.
I received a degree in Creative Writing from Western Washington University in 2005. My grandfather Lynn Huff was the one who convinced me to get an English degree, arguing that no matter which career I would end up choosing, the skills I would acquire as an English major would give me the advantages I needed to succeed. He believed that the ability to efficiently and effectively convey ideas using written and spoken language is one of the most important skills that anyone in any business can use to demonstrate their worth. At 20 and unsure of what I wanted for my future, it was a relief to hear him encourage me not to worry then about what my job was going to be in a decade; if I focused my studies on simply becoming a more thoughtful and effective communicator, I could do anything I wanted. He’d used his English degree to put himself at the forefront of computing in the 1950s and 60s at Safeco, working with machines that took up entire floors but had less processing power than a calculator, and he eventually became a Vice President at the company. I was thankful to have his success as a touchstone, and his encouragement to live my life in whatever way brought me fulfillment, even though he found most of my life choices baffling.
Armed with my invaluable English degree, I moved back to Seattle and got an unpaid internship at a free weekly newspaper. I wrote about music and performed it for years, living in an infamously grimy apartment complex in Capitol Hill called “The Undre Arms” that looked as if it could be knocked over by a stiff breeze. Eventually, living at the poverty line lost some of its luster, so I got a job writing copy and designing product pages. My derelict building with hideously-stained kindergarten carpeting was torn to the ground, so I moved into a nice apartment with hardwood floors. I met my future wife at an engagement party for two friends who didn’t end up getting married. She got her PhD in Materials Science and whisked me away to Europe, where she’d been offered a job in a national lab. Seattle was a hard place to leave.
We’ve been living in Berlin since 2015, using every excuse at our disposal to travel and eat good food around the world. I have continued working as a freelance copywriter from abroad, happily assuming the role of househusband while my wife wins the bread and wears the proverbial pants. When I finally grew tired of her admonishing me for wasting my life with video games, I began using my free time to write my debut fantasy novel, The Font of Power. Though the book is rife with adventure, plant magic, and underlying social commentary, it is essentially just a lengthy testament to how badly I wish I had a dog. When we finally settle down and stop traveling all the time, I’m going to get one.