Cover Photo: Tallulah Pomeroy
Tallulah Pomeroy

The Future in Motion: Why I Judge High School Debate Tournaments

“You hope and hope they’ll get their chance and you know it’s possible they won’t.”

I hit my first debate tournament for the same reason I did everything else at fourteen: Some guy I was into was doing it. I didn’t say shit my entire first round. I just sat there, staring. Lost in the sauce.

Bryan Washington is the author of Lot, with fiction and essays appearing in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, BuzzFeed, Vulture, The Paris Review, Boston Review, Tin House, One Story, Bon Appétit, MUNCHIES, American Short Fiction, GQ, FADER, The Awl, Hazlitt, and Catapult. He’s the recipient of an O. Henry Award, and he lives in Houston.