"You have my promise that, as president, I will be an arts president. . . Art is speech, art is what life is about." pic.twitter.com/tj3LKokjEG
— Project Bernie '16 (@ProjectBernie16) January 30, 2016
Saturday, January 30, 2016
"I will be an arts president." ~ Senator Bernie Sanders
Monday, January 11, 2016
A Literary Valentine's Day in Spokane, 2/14/16
There's nothing better to do on Valentine's Day than to read strange, dark fairy tales . . . except to hear new fairy tales performed by the writers themselves. I'll be one of several poets and fiction writers telling stories at The Bing Crosby Theater. So, join us.
All you need to bring is your heart in a box, or a ticket.
When? 7 PM
Tickets: $17
Sunday, November 15, 2015
A Chapbook: The Unique Stocking Stuffer for Readers
Dimensions of this Chapbook: 4" x 6"
Typical dimensions of a stocking: More than 4" x 6"
Stuffable?
Yes.
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| "How The Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble" by Erin Pringle-Toungate |
What's the Chapbook? "How The Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble" is a longer story that revolves around the disappearance and death of a sister, an agricultural fair in the rural Midwest, and a man who has been shot.
Beginning Excerpt:
But aside from the black crepe ribbons that flap on the white poles of the fair entrance archway, anyone who didn't live in the town last summer or close enough to hear the nightly news or who didn't ask about the luminaries lining the dirt avenue that ran along the fair's midway last night, wouldn't know that a young woman named Helen Greene disappeared from last summer's Agricultural Fair.
Under the fair entrance archway linger the men who served pancakes at the church last month and sell fabric poppies at the one lighted intersection on Memorial Day weekend. They wear neon yellow vests over their T-shirts and bellies. Just before dark, the traffic into the fairgrounds will become steady, and when dark falls, they'll swing their flashlights and raise their hands in greeting to the people they recognize, and they recognize most everyone.
Under the fair entrance archway linger the men who served pancakes at the church last month and sell fabric poppies at the one lighted intersection on Memorial Day weekend. They wear neon yellow vests over their T-shirts and bellies. Just before dark, the traffic into the fairgrounds will become steady, and when dark falls, they'll swing their flashlights and raise their hands in greeting to the people they recognize, and they recognize most everyone.
Tonight, the carnies will speak in tongues and the town will drop screams from the rides, buy tickets, carry whorls of cotton candy back to their trailers and leaning homes--until somewhere in the middle night, the sound of the fair will become one constant chord, like the interstate in the distance or the light rushing through glass bulbs.
Publisher: The Head and The Hand Press, Philadelphia 2015
Original Publisher: The Minnesota Review
Awards: Finalist in The Kore Fiction Contest, nominated for Pushcart Prize
Length: 43 pages
Price (including shipping): $6.25
Ordering Info:
- To order, send me a message.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Call for Fiction, Literati Quarterly Winter 2015/16 Issue
Hello, you!
Fall Issue!
The Fall Issue of The Literati Quarterly is now up, which I'm very pleased to announce for a number of reasons:
Winter Issue!
Call for Winter 2015/2016 issue of The Literati Quarterly
The Literati Quarterly is now accepting poetry, fiction, plays, translations, essays, art, interviews, reviews, or a hybrid thereof, for the Winter Issue. Work that touches on life, loss, darkness, love and friendship are preferred. The issue will be dedicated to the life of the editor-in-chief's significant other, who died tragically this Summer.
More information for the fiction side of the issue:
Go read the Fall Issue now!
And here's the LQ on Facebook
Fall Issue!
The Fall Issue of The Literati Quarterly is now up, which I'm very pleased to announce for a number of reasons:
- I'm the fiction editor over there now
- The poetry editor and I designed this issue
- I interviewed Tara Snowden (see page 63!), the featured artist of the issue, whose work I have admired for a number of years
- We have new fiction by Michael Martone, Kate J. Reed, Jack Kaulfus, GJ Jensen, and Austin Eichelberger
Winter Issue!
Call for Winter 2015/2016 issue of The Literati Quarterly
The Literati Quarterly is now accepting poetry, fiction, plays, translations, essays, art, interviews, reviews, or a hybrid thereof, for the Winter Issue. Work that touches on life, loss, darkness, love and friendship are preferred. The issue will be dedicated to the life of the editor-in-chief's significant other, who died tragically this Summer.
More information for the fiction side of the issue:
- Longer stories preferred over flash (stories of at least 10 pages and capping at about 20 pages)
- Stories desired that prize the language as much, or more than, the plot
- Cleverness-for-the-sake-of-cleverness is not an asset here
Go read the Fall Issue now!
And here's the LQ on Facebook
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Midyear Memo: Words, Here
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| Untitled by Crystal, via Flickr Used under CC license |
Available
- "From The Wind-Up Swing" in Gravel"
- "When We Were This Many" in Gravel
- "The Joke" in 2River
- "That Was Your Sister's Dress" in 2River
- "Long Before My Sister Decides to Die" in 2River
- "The Way To My Sister's House" in 2River
- "Friday Nights" in 2River
- "There Was A Coupon in the Newspaper" in Journal of Compressed Creative Arts (Matter Press)
- "What's Left" in Gambling the Aisle (Issue 8, page 8)
- "How The Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble," chapbook from The Head and The Hand Press available in Philadelphia at Elixir Coffee or, from my author stash, if you'd like a signed copy ($6)
- "The Lightning Tree," a short story from Underground Voices e-story series ($1.50)
Old News
The Floating Order, my first collection of short stories, is still in print from Two Ravens Press (2009).
~
I enjoy speaking with readers, sharing my work, and visiting classrooms.
Please contact me to set up an event.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Who Did You Read This Summer? Share the 2015 Summer Library Series
Well, dear readers, we have arrived at the end of the 2015 Summer Library Series. All summer long, authors have reminisced about their childhood memories in the library, from Philadelphia to Switzerland to Roma, Texas. Thank you for following the series, whether you discovered it this season or have been with us from the beginning.
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| Children gathered around a table of books, Central Circulating Library at College and St. George Streets, Toronto, Ontario Used under CC license |
Please thank the contributing authors by rereading their work, telling your librarian about this series, by sending the writers a personal note via their websites, or by sharing your favorite author's reflection on your Facebook wall.
Any time an author hears from a reader is incredibly wonderful, as it helps assure us that readers do exist--for much of what we hear is that readers don't exist or that people just don't read like they used to or [fill in any other anecdote about the death of reading].
One effect of this is an intensity of doubt that jeopardizes a writer's confidence while writing, before writing, or after writing for the day. And any time an artist starts to doubt the importance of art and the world is a bad time for the artist and the world.
So, as readers, please help other readers discover these writers, just as you have.
I'm very proud to have hosted another successful season, and I hope you've found the series one that you think about in the passing moments. May you check out an abundance of books from your local library between now and next summer. Our communities depend on it.
Sincerely,
Erin
*
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| Bustelton Library |
*
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| Bookmobile, TimberlandRegional Library 1
"No longer in service, this old TRL bookmobile now resides on private property
just south of Amanda Park, Washington. Photo taken 19 Dec 2011. Library Service to this area of rural
Washington is now provided by the Amanda Park branch of Timberland Regional Library."
Used under CC license |
By Maya Jewell Zeller
Where my family lived wasn’t a town. It was a series of backroads off Rural Route 4, a river bend tourists would have driven past—or did—if it wasn’t for their interest in the covered bridge, promised like a Meryl Streep movie, if you take the turn indicated and head down the hill, past the tangle of maple and alder, sword fern and salmonberry, through the field of hay grass and thistle with the nettled edge. [Continue reading]
*
by Regi Claire
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| Primarschule Mūnchwilen, Photo by Roland Zumbuehl |
When I was eight, I read a whole library. A library? Yes. Housed in a small attic room with a combed ceiling, up a steep flight of wooden stairs from the stone-flagged second floor of my village primary school. But why the sink and cupboards? Why the thick cigarette smoke? Well, the library must have been an afterthought. [Continue reading]
*
by
Liz Rognes
Summers in Lake Mills, Iowa meant long, hazy, humid days. My mom would drop my siblings and me off at the town pool for morning swimming lessons, two miles away from our farm, and then we would walk a few blocks to my grandma’s house, wrapped in our towels, our skin smelling of chlorine and salty sweat. My Grandma Bea was an Irish Catholic Democrat, the kind who fervently believed in social justice and local participation. She was on the Board of Directors for the public library, and she or my mom would take us every week for story hour or just to check out books. When we were old enough, we could walk by ourselves from Grandma’s house to the library across the street: a small, unassuming building on the outside, but on the inside filled to the brim with books and stories about the big, exciting, incomprehensible world outside of our little Iowa farm town. [Continue reading]
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This Book: One Week
by
Emilia Rodriguez
We didn’t stay in places very long when I was young. My parents were born in Mexico. My father was not a U.S. citizen. We moved to Fort Worth, TX when I was in the first grade. Until then, all of my classes had been bilingual. Spanish was my first language. My English was shaky. I could read a little and watch cartoons, but holding a conversation was difficult. [Continue reading]
by
Emilia Rodriguez
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| Emilia Rodriguez as a child, Used with author's permission |
*
by
Ben Cartwright
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| The Cartwright Family, Used with author's permission |
Dear Spokane Valley Library (1980),
My mother was losing it. School canceled for a week, noonday sky black and missing the sun's round punctuation, so faces covered in surgical masks (because of St. Helen's) we clambered into the Volkswagen bus. Ash in the streets made crests and troughs under our tires. Laneless, we stuttered over Sprague, crept around the S-curves of Main, wipers set to high and accomplishing nothing. My mother, driving blind and sobbing, triggered a sympathy response in my sister, and their chorus of lamentation as I held my finger to my small mouth, made the noise a librarian makes when she (the ones I loved were always she) tells the world to remain silent, to keep a kind of order, for a while. Your square door was lit yellow and bright. It was the end of the world. I left the van first. [Continue reading]
*
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| The East Branch Library, Evansville, IN From EVLP History |
Opened in 1913, the year of my mother's birth, the East Branch of Evansville, Indiana system (now called East Branch of Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library) was the library of choice for our family, as it was within walking distance from our home 6 blocks away. By the time I was old enough to read and walk to the library with Mother, my sister, and brother, it was 1945; Dad was finishing his World War II Army service, so wasn't home to walk with us. [Continue reading]
*
Please visit again.
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| Photograph "Chesapeake Library" by Bill Smith Used under CC license |
Thursday, August 13, 2015
2015 Summer Library Series: Walking to East Branch by Carol (Ryan) Pringle
Hello, hello! Welcome to the Summer Library Series, an annual weekly exhibit of wonderful essays in which professional writers reflect on their childhood in the library. This week's edition is a slight departure from the formula, as our author is not a professional writer, although three of her children are. She is a dedicated reader of the series and was very pleased to contribute this reflection. I bring to you the origin of my love of the library, my mother. Please enjoy her memories of the East Branch Library in Evansville, Indiana.
*
Walking to East Branchby
Carol (Ryan) Pringle
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| The East Branch Library, Evansville, IN From EVLP History |
The
building itself was in an ideal location between Stanley Hall Elementary School
and Bayard Park. (After I was invited to
write of my experiences, it occurred to me that there was no library in our
elementary school. Neither did our
classrooms have novels and non-fiction books to read, unless the teacher read
to us from a book she'd acquired. So, access to a nearby library was essential
in broadening our world). On the east
side of the library, Bayard Park afforded us a place to slide, swing and teeter
totter during the summers of our youth, as well as to hold special school
activities, celebrating the end of school.
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| Carol as a child, used with author's permission |
As
one of many Carnegie libraries, East Branch seemed a huge building in this
young child's eyes. More space was
dedicated to adult books and reading materials than to children's, as the
number of children's authors was less prolific than in today's world. Even the books each of us owned were few in
number, so our twice-a-month trips to exchange our books that were due (very
important that we not have an overdue book) for new ones, were vital to our joy
of reading.
It
was an enforced rule to be QUIET in the library, and if we needed to speak to
each other or to the librarian, it had to be in hushed tones. Otherwise, "SHHHHH" was the most
used word heard. I decided the librarian's job entailed keeping the room quiet,
no matter how mean a look she maintained . . . oh yes, and stamping the book to
indicate when it was due back. I
wouldn't have dared ask her a question about a book (or anything else) for fear
of her shushing me. On the other hand,
years later, a friendly librarian was hired and it was like having a cheerful
breeze floating through the room.
Two
images stand out in my memory of those young years--one was the stereoscopes
that were set on a library table for anyone to look through at 3-D
pictures. The stereoscopes were somewhat
like the modern View-Masters but were more cumbersome in their structure. Still, it was fun to look at the scenes from
this interesting non-toy.
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| Children using stereoscopes, Cincinnati, OH public library |
The
second image is the experience of a Summer Reading Program circa 1949, in which
the program's final activity, as a reward for having read and reported on a
certain number of books (10? 20?), was a
trip to Lincoln City, Indiana, where Abraham Lincoln once lived, as well as the
location of his mother's (Nancy Hanks Lincoln's) grave. The process of attaining this reward was
interesting in itself, as the title of each book read was placed on a paper
"log" and added to the building of a "cabin" there in the
library. It was no easy task for me to
read and report to that strict librarian, regarding the number of books
required, but the struggle brought great satisfaction in completing the program
and receiving the reward!
By
the time I was a Brownie Scout and then a Girl Scout, the basement of the
library became the meeting place after school for our troop. I clearly remember the "flying up"
ceremony from Brownie to Girl Scout held there and also recall one of our meeting
in which we performed "Snow White," my role being that of the
Mirror. How meaningful that role still
is in that "reflecting" is one of the main things I continue to do in
my daily thoughts.
Having
pondered these memories, I now realize what a dear part of my childhood the
East Branch Library was, from the feeling of family togetherness in walking to
get there, to the sharing of the experience of reading, to the disciplines of
quietness and being prompt in returning what we'd borrowed, to the sense of
community in knowing others shared this space.
Although libraries have dramatically changed in their services,
including computers and other ways of accessing books around the state and
country, they continue to be a vital part of my life in the community in which
I now live.
*
Carol (Ryan) Pringle grew up on Linwood Avenue in Evansville, Indiana and now lives in Casey, Illinois. She has her bachelor's and master's degrees in elementary education from Indiana State University and is about to begin her last year of educating children before retiring next spring at age 76. She is an active member of the Martinsville, IL Methodist church, enjoys singing, and walks her dog three times a day. She is also a grandmother of five. You can read past interviews I've done with her: "Christmas Began at 1104 South Linwood" and "The Woman Who Helped Author Me."
If this is your first time travelling with the Summer Library Series, you can catch up by visiting all the places we've been this season: Philadelphia, Washington, Switzerland, Iowa, Texas, and Spokane. Past seasons of the series are housed here. The series will continue through August, so please check back next Thursday, and share with friends and strangers until then.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
2015 Summer Library Series: My Dear Library by Ben Cartwright
Welcome back to the Summer Library Series. It's August, that part of the summer that is both full-on summer and the inevitable decline toward autumn. And so it is with this season's library series here at What She Might Think. All summer, writers have been sharing their childhood memories of the library: wild horses gone still in streams, cigarettes left for an attic, the refusal of returning books, the fear of betraying one library by checking out the books of another, and the small, enormous political acts of reading what others don't approve of.
We now move to a series of dedications, letters, summonings of the past, with writer Ben Cartwright. Enjoy!
We now move to a series of dedications, letters, summonings of the past, with writer Ben Cartwright. Enjoy!
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| Envelope, photograph by Dingler1109, used under CC license |
My Dear Library
by
Ben Cartwright
Dear
Spokane Valley Library (1980),
My mother was losing it.
School canceled for a week, noonday sky black and missing the sun's
round punctuation, so faces covered in surgical masks (because of St. Helen's)
we clambered into the Volkswagen bus.
Ash in the streets made crests and troughs under our tires. Laneless, we stuttered over Sprague, crept
around the S-curves of Main, wipers set to high and accomplishing nothing. My mother, driving blind and sobbing,
triggered a sympathy response in my sister, and their chorus of lamentation as
I held my finger to my small mouth, made the noise a librarian makes when she
(the ones I loved were always she) tells the world to remain silent, to keep a
kind of order, for a while. Your square
door was lit yellow and bright. It was
the end of the world. I left the van
first.
 |
| The Cartwright Family, used with author's permission. |
Dear
Spokane Valley Library (1984),
In the old building, the Children's Section was a separate
room. The yellow backs of Nancy Drew's jeremiad
were like a magnet. We took turns
looking at the pictures pressed into the vinyl of the Empire Strikes Back soundtrack, scratched and unlistenable, never
checked out more than once by any given family, a found portal. I'm sure the separate room was dangerous, maybe
the reason for the new building. Vague
memories of adults being ushered away, men being questioned about who belonged
to them, whom they belonged to.
On our island of the Children's Section, in the old building,
I learned to play with others. A boy
swears he will pee in the corner, next to the oversized picture books. My sister tells him she's a witch, feeds him
one of the allspice she keeps in her pocket, says she'll grant him a wish if he
swallows. Once it's down, we tell him
never to pee in the library again, or she'll say the word, and a thousand tiny
spiders will hatch in his insides, make their way through membrane and sinews,
come pouring out of his ears, his eyes, his small and doglike instrument he
uses to destroy the public good.
Years later, she earns her Master's in library science, and I
lead undergraduate students into the stacks in a university library, in another
state, another time zone. I tell a
student on his phone that he can leave, can get into his father's Escalade and
drive off, without a grade; that this is a library, and you don't do that in
here. I offer extra-credit if they read
anything banned.
Dear
Spokane Valley Library (1990),
My sister is a library page, and her spies are
everywhere. Still, my quiet and troubled
first girlfriend placed my hand on her breast, underneath her shirt, while
watching Edward Scissorhands, so I
turn to you. I am discrete, and know the
call numbers. I start with anatomy, but
those books are like a deer trail that starts somewhere you think you know, and
then leads you into a ragged clearing where there isn't any outlet, only
forest, the peeling skin of birches, an impenetrable wall of Ponderosa
Pines. I turn to psychology, and
understand now, that I was reading the Kinsey report. I find a terror of unknowing, a gulf I am not
ready for. In graduate school, I think
of this as "the fear"—the wave of books you never understand, the
reading of which would outlast you, and take another lifetime. Offering to shelve what I've pulled, my
sister's friends tell their friends, who tell their friends, who tell their
friends what I'm reading--the library pages a perfect system of babble, like
the voices that spoke to Joan of Arc from the brook. My sister throws a library page party at our
house that devolves into laughter. None
of them were in the theater, after being driven there and dropped off,
unkissed, lost in the dark, hand trembling and pressed against what Solomon
called gazelles.
Dear
Spokane Valley Library (2014),
I am relieved for your tables with the single chairs, each
with private outlets, a ziggurat of essays to grade before me, a place that is
not my home, where I will not fall asleep.
I hear the new building is now old.
Like a selkie, you will be changing skins, but I remember you best when
you traveled from wave to wave, crest and then undertow. This is not to say I will not vote for you to
change. Once, I slipped outside beyond
your loading dock, in the dark, smoked my first and only cigarette near your dumpsters. The friend who gave it to me is buried. I don't know what it means. Another time I drove across the country, and
married the first girl I saw in town.
She was reading a book. She wore
red socks, and looked like a librarian.
Thank you.
*
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| Ben Cartwright |
Ben Cartwright grew up in Spokane. His work has appeared in many fine places, such as the Seneca Review, The Stinging Fly, Midwestern Gothic, Diagram, Verse Daily, DMQ Review, and Matter Press. He has his PhD from University of Kansas, where he taught for a number of years; he also taught in Tianjin, China and now teaches at Spokane Falls Community College. Currently, Ben is writing a speculative fiction novel set in 19th
century Tianjin, China titled An Amah in
Victoria Park. You can follow him on
Twitter here.
If this is your first time travelling with the Summer Library Series, you can catch up by visiting all the places we've been this season: Philadelphia, Washington, Switzerland, Iowa, and Texas. Past seasons of the series are housed here. The series will continue through August, so please check back next Thursday, and share with friends and strangers until then.
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