[Photo: Ruby McShane]

After reading through hundreds upon hundreds of well thought-out and highly inspirational applications, we here at the Terribly Official Sub Pop Records Scholarship Committee have chosen three extraordinarily qualified student winners for our 2018 Sub Pop Loser Scholarship.

Our $7,000 winner this year is Ruby McShane of Lincoln High School in Portland Oregon. Ruby blew us away with her sensational photography, drawings, mixed media card designs, and incredibly caring attitude. Her volunteer work helping refugees feel more acclimated in her community was a true inspiration. In her application essay Ruby showed us an incredible love for music and visual arts as well as an outgoing compassion that set her apart from all of the other applicants. Working to stop the bullying of non-conformists is a cause we here at Sub Pop can definitely get behind and Ruby is all about it. Reed College will be lucky to have Ruby in attendance next year as she brings her great talent, activism and creativity to their campus. 

Yasmin Ettobi of Central Kitsap High in Silverdale, Washington walks away with $5,000 this year for her submission to the Sub Pop Loser Scholarship. As a young writer Yasmin found that writing for the school paper wasn’t quite enough, and turned her efforts to covering music. Yasmin soon began writing album reviews, live show reports and editorial articles for a grip of online publications, all at the age of 17. Passion shines through her writing about music and it is clear to us that Yasmin is going to grow into an incredible journalist, as her music writing skills are already top flight. As a KEXP volunteer, a member of the MoPop youth advisory board, and a  photographer at live shows, Yasmin has already heavily contributed to her local music community and we’re confident she’ll be making many more contributions to the scene as the years go by.

Mia Barnes of Franklin High School in Portland will be receiving $3,000 as a 2018 Sub Pop Loser Scholarship winner. Mia is the most talented illustrator we have seen apply for the Loser Scholarship in many years. Her drawings and paintings are out of this world: alien-like, monstrous, gross, and beautiful. We’d be fools not to mention Mia’s incredible application, which came in the form of a four-page, hand-illustrated comic letting us know exactly why she deserves to be a Loser winner. Mia’s talent for illustration, layout and design is going to grow into something even more special in the years to come. Our scholarship committee could not get enough of Mia’s comic and as soon as we saw her application, we knew she was definitely a Sub Pop Loser. 

This year we had a record number of applicants for the Loser Scholarship, which made this the hardest selection process we’ve ever had. For those losers who didn’t win this year: thank you for applying, we loved your submissions too! You made this decision really tough on us and you’re an incredibly inspiring bunch of people. We’re certain that you will go on to blow us all away with your future accomplishments.

Thanks for playing.