Unexpected Weather Events on Spokane's KPBX, Arts (P)review

I recently sat down with Karin Emry in the old Spokane fire station that now houses Spokane's KPBX. We talked about my new book, Unexpected Weather Events, and it was actually the first time I'd held a copy (her copy), so that was really lovely. I read from the book, talked about grief and the stories, as well as how I'm finding writing time these days. I didn't think to take a picture, but luckily, she remembered to record the discussion. She edited it down to a segment for this week's Arts (P)review. The recording will be available for a few weeks, so if you missed it, you can listen again: https://www.spokanepublicradio.org/show/thursday-arts-preview/2023-09-28/sep-28-2023-minecraft-at-the-mac-unexpected-weather-events-ewus-risograph-residency

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How did that book release party go, Erin Pringle? Very well, thank you!

It's true! Unexpected Weather Events has been released into the world. The Shadle Library room was exactly right and beautiful; over sixty people attended, I read two stories with only one coughing fit (I'm recovering from a bad cold), and then my friend Neil Elwell and his friend Ken Danielson played wonderful music while people mingled, bought books, and I signed them. 

Thank you to everyone who came, and to everyone who considered it. And thank you to the Spokane Public Library and Sharma Shields for making the event an official library event and helping to publicize it.

This is a pretty nice place to live, I think. You people are swell.

(All photos and film below are by Sharma Shields.)

Music by Neil Elwell (guitar) and Ken Danielson (percussion)

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Couldn't attend? Let's find another time. Event calendar here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/events.html

Need a copy right now? https://awst-press.com/shop/unexpected-weather-events

“Reading Unexpected Weather Events is like looking into a snow so mesmerizing and crystalline you are unable to turn away, at once illuminated and profoundly lost. They are stories of winter madness—troubling, tender, and hallucinatory—stories of connection and misconnection, of love and grief and isolation in the increasingly dangerous and tenuous reality of our contemporary condition.” — Polly Buckingham, author of The Expense of a View and The River People

Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (October 1, 2023)

 

Poems:

• Night Letter by Diane Thiel (from her book Resistance Fantasies)
• Under Stars by Tess Gallagher (from her book Under Stars)
• Ghosts by Jack Gilbert (from his book The Great Fires)

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🠊 More Wake to Words here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

Unexpected Weather Events by Erin Pringle--now listed on Small Press Distribution (SPD)

If you have a favorite bookstore, please let them know about Unexpected Weather Events. The book is now up on the distributor website, which is where they’ll hunt it down:

https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9781736765968/unexpected-weather-events.aspx

Your conversation might go like this:

You (approaching book counter): Oh my goodness I can’t find my favorite writer’s newest book on your shelves!! (Hands to cheeks for emphasis and bewilderment.)

Bookseller: Gracious me! How can that be? Let me help you. What’s his name?

You: Her name is Erin Pringle.

Bookseller: Thinking then typing.

You: Pringle like the potato chip.

Bookseller: Backspacing. More typing. Hmm. I can order it for you. It retails at $25.

You: Great! I’d much prefer to order it through your store than through [insert infamous online bookstore and seller of everything else].

Bookseller: Thanks so much for your support! 

You: I remember when a paperback cost 1.25.

Bookseller: Or even 5.99.

You: But bread was 10 cents.

Bookseller: And gasoline 99 cents/gallon.

You: My mother quit smoking when a pack cost 50 cents. Too rich for my blood, she said.

Bookseller: Nodding.

You: Thanks again for keeping culturally important spaces in the community.

Bookseller: Thanks for reading!

You and Bookseller start to dance together among the aisles, and others join.

(Curtain)

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Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (9/24/23)

 

Today I'm reading Anne Sexton's poem "The Maiden Without Hands" from her collection Transformations.

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🠊 More Wake to Words here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

Twelve Days Until Book Release: The Countdown Begins

Today begins the official twelve-day countdown to the book release party for my newest story collection Unexpected Weather Events. And so I bring to you 12 blow-mold snowmen, as one of the stories in the new collection features two snowmen decorations that have been in the story's family for several generations:

Hope to see you in twelve days at Shadle Library in Spokane, 2 PM (October 1). 

• More information about the reading here: https://spokanelibrary.libnet.info/event/9066628
• Unable to attend? Reserve a copy from the press, and it will appear in your mailbox soon! https://awst-press.com/shop/unexpected-weather-events

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Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee 9/10/23

 

Poems:

• To be of use by Marge Piercy (from Poetry Foundation)
• September, 1918 by Amy Lowell (from Poetry Foundation)

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🠊 More Wake to Words here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (8/27/23)

 

Poems:

• What is This Air Changing, This Warm Aura, These Threads of Air Vibrating Rows of People by Ariel Yelen (from Poetry/March 2022)
• Contentment by Rüştü Onur, trans by Hüseyin Alhas and Ulaş Özgün (from Poetry/March 2022)
• A Great Nowhere by Öykü Tekten (from Poetry/April 2022)
• Tablets VI by Dunya Mikhail (from Poetry/April 2022)

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🠊 More Wake to Words here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

Unexpected Book Events: Release Party at Shadle Library, Spokane

Recently, a number of Spokane libraries underwent large renovations. The main structure may have not lost its main walls, but enough has changed that it's difficult to walk in and remember the original library. Our neighborhood library, Shadle, was one of those. Library construction is likely happening in many places outside of Spokane--adapting buildings to the changing needs of the communities they serve. Our new Shadle Library features a large indoor play area whose accompanying shrieks of delight reverberate from wall to shelf, and would have led every long-ago librarian to faint dead. Children whirling down slides in a library would have been something akin to a librarian's version of Dante's inferno.

Books now sit on portable shelving, here and there stand self-serve kiosks that provide check-out services. Of course, the days of card catalogs are long gone (I'll never get over that), but now the catalog is not only on the computers but also on large touch-screens that are attached to the ends of a few bookshelves. Checking in a book means setting it on a conveyer belt that whips it out of sight and registers your accomplishment on a screen. 

In fact, on Sundays, only a security guard mans Shadle Library, and everyone is left to use the library without the steadfast eye of a librarian. It's bizarre to me, but according to the information board, it's a cost-cutting solution, and according to my son, nothing that calls for surprise.

The previous version of the Shadle library had one meeting room that I remember. Maybe two, but I'm hard-pressed to conjure it. Now, it has several, and one very large one--all with the functionality of a university classroom. Fancy ceiling projectors, drop-down screens, microphones, surround-sound speakers, a bevy of moveable tables and chairs on wheels, as well as a computer set-up that connects to a laptop (yours or the library's) to control all of these gadgets. 

Shadle Library Event Room

Like a perfectly created conference room without stuffy carpet or generically interesting art, the large event room in Shadle Library looks more like a modernist theatre, but with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out into the surrounding park. 

Not only that but library cardholders can also use these event rooms for free. (There are a few exceptions.)

So, as soon as I knew that Unexpected Book Events would appear on October first, I reserved the large event room in Shadle Library for the book-release party. And as I have done the past three book releases, I went about creating the posters, hanging them around town, and adding the event to the various online calendars that residents and visitors sometimes check when they need activity ideas. 

Imagine my complete and utter surprise when months later, a librarian emailed me out of the blue and brought it to my attention that the book-release party could be an official library event, which would add it to the library's public event calendar and event newsletter. It also came with the added support of a person to set up the room. A person to set up the room? And with an hour of leeway included, which means I don't have to pull my wagon of things into the library six minutes before the start of the release party and set the room up with the speed of magic or Mary Poppins.

And that above graphic? All the library's doing. I didn't have to find free online design programs to do it, enter my email for a 30-day trial, spend an hour inserting images and then another hour after the program crashed my browser. I didn't have to send the order through FedEx, only to pick up my order and discover that the black for inserted graphics was a lighter black than the background black. It certainly didn't look like that on my screen. (Okay, I had already done this for the book-release party, but the above graphic I didn't do.)

Just. 

Wow.

I would also like to note that I'm billed as a "local author," which I haven't been before. I've lived here for thirteen years, but I don't think that you can decide when you become "local." 

My first book came out when I was in my sixth year living in Texas--three of those as a graduate student, which renders a status that makes one feel more transient than local. The Whole World at Once came out seven years into my living in Spokane, but five of those years I'd spent raising a small child, which meant I knew the neighbors, Bernie Sanders supporters, and our child's preschool teachers. 

As someone who came out of an MFA program in Texas and not the nearby MFA program, I lived not on the far outskirts of the local writer community but positively out in the boonies--all of my writing people were back in Austin. 

In 2020, Hezada! I Miss You marked ten years of living here, but the whole novel is set in the rural Midwest, which makes claiming "local writer" status seem . . . silly, even if I physically wrote the whole book in Spokane. 

But now, friends, it's 2023. Probably half of the stories in Unexpected Weather Events are set in the Northwest. The other part, of course, is in that rural Midwest that haunts all my work.

All of this is to say that the BOOK RELEASE EXTRAVAGANZA for Unexpected Weather Events will occur on October 1st, 2023 at 2 PM. Shadle Library, Spokane. And you're absolutely invited.

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• Reserve your copy of Unexpected Weather Events from Awst Press: https://awst-press.com/shop/unexpected-weather-events
• Plan to attend the book release party on October 1st, Shadle Library at 2 PM

Sharma Shields on Unexpected Weather Events: "Nostalgia falls here like snow, death like a lightning strike"

Sharma Shields has been reading books again (I don't think she stops), and she's writing about those books in the most recent issue of Trending Northwest. Lucky for me, she has included Unexpected Weather Events in her list. About it, she writes, "In her latest fiction collection, Pringle writes with mesmerizing compassion and clarity about suicide, queer identity, grief, and family. Nostalgia falls here like snow, death like a lightning strike, hope like a break in an evening storm. This is fiction that paints—gorgeously—the full complexity and emotional range of our lives as humans."

Read the full article here: https://trendingnorthwest.com/muse/fall-into-fascinating-reads-must-read-novels-by-northwest-authors/

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• Reserve your copy of Unexpected Weather Events from Awst Press: https://awst-press.com/shop/unexpected-weather-events
• Plan to attend the book release party on October 1st at Shadle Library, 2 PM