Author/Editor Jaimee Garbacik is launching a project called The Ghosts of Seattle Past, and anyone with memories of Seattle’s lost spaces is invited to be a part of the project.

Seattle has always been a boom town, shaped as much by the gold rush of the 19th century as by the explosion of the tech industry today. And yet, this most recent surge of development has provoked an outpouring of emotion and nostalgia, as week by week our beloved quintessentially Seattle haunts disappear. It seems the entire city is grieving its changing face, in conversation, on Facebook, through art installations and digital tributes. But what about something tangible that we can hold in our hands? What will preserve our stories and map the city’s immediate past before our memories fade? Nothing is being done to permanently compile the spaces that meant so much to us…until now.

“This is not an effort to stem the tide of change nor to debate Seattle’s future, but a suggestion that we reflect on its past“ said project curator Jaimee Garbacik, “Wherever this city may be going, may we remember what it’s been, and who we’ve been in it.”

All are invited to share memories of our lost spaces, whether from last week or the last century. Send photographs, drawings, and memorabilia. Write just a few lines or submit a long-form essay celebrating a place once held dear. Contributors are welcome to use the medium that tells their story best. Select pieces will be curated into a living atlas to tour galleries and festivals, beginning with the Short Run small press fest at Seattle Center’s Fisher Pavilion on October 31. After which point, it will be published as an anthology featuring hand-drawn maps of the places commemorated, and will be available far and wide.

The Ghosts of Seattle Past wants to know: Where do you miss?

The Call is open Aug. 1-31 at www.SeattleGhosts.com. Don’t let Seattle spaces be forgotten.

The Ghosts of Seattle Past is an atlas of our memories, a collaborative map of places loved and missed in a rapidly evolving city. In this interactive art installation curated by author/editor Jaimee Garbacik, storytelling and cartography preserve the venues, restaurants, shops and institutions we’ve lost to development in Seattle, the city of the future. The Ghosts of Seattle Past will first appear at the annual Short Run small press festival at Fisher Pavilion in October.

Jaimee Garbacik is the owner and founder of Footnote Editorial. She has been privileged to edit for New York Times bestselling authors, Caldecott Honor and Emmy Award recipients, and some of the world’s foremost scientists. Jaimee is also the author of Gender and Sexuality For Beginners (For Beginners, 2013, illus. by Jeffrey Lewis), a critical examination of the sex-gender system and the evolution of gender roles, currently on curricula at more than a dozen universities.