New Review of The Whole World at Once: "Each story is beautiful in its heartbreaking simplicity and raw emotion"

Mattoon, Illinois is about a forty-minute drive from where I grew up, and its newspaper, the Journal Gazette & Times Courier covers news and views from the city and surrounding rural areas. It's close enough to where I grew up that I remember walking through its antique malls as a child with my older brothers; in my teenage years, I spent many a late night roaming the aisles of its super Walmart, and in college, I sat in the beautiful, but crumbling (at that time), train station as I waited for the train to take me to Chicago for college and later with my best friend for a trip to New Orleans.

Casey, Illinois is where I grew up, but Mattoon, Illinois is part of the landscape of my life, memories, and imagination, which is the landscape where my stories live. And so I am SO pleased to have someone from the area not only read the book but also incredibly honored that she found it worthwhile on all counts: from theme, content, to the style itself. Reviewer Elena Pruitt writes . . .

"People who grew up in rural areas will feel an eerie sense of stories they've grown up hearing or stories they've lived, a sense that this could happen or has happened here, and yet the pervasive thread of grief opens these stories up to anyone." 

Continue reading the review here. Then, share it with all of your friends, Midwestern or not. :)

"Review: Author weaves stories showing depth of human experience of grief" by Elena Pruitt, Journal Gazette & Times Courier.

Giant Nerd Books in Spokane now carries The Whole World at Once

Spokane's Giant Nerd Books on Monroe Street, now carries signed copies of The Whole World at Once. Have you been to this wonderful bookstore? Giant Nerd Books has the lure of discovery from the moment you walk in, from its mid-century reading chairs to its tall, tall ceilings--perfect for its ingredients: books, books, books, artwork, books, books, comics, and more books. (They have all the Oz books, from the early 1900s. All. The. Oz. Books.)

Giant Nerd is definitely a place to check out if you haven't, whether you're out to discover The Whole World at Once or any world between two covers. Learn more about the store and its owner, Nathan, from The Spokesman Review: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/mar/23/giant-nerd-books-is-a-book-hunters-passion-project/

Thanks to all local bookstores that support our reading habits. And to community members who support our local bookstores.

*

The Whole World at Once is a collection of stories that trace rural landscapes and the surreal experiences of living, beauty, and breathing in a world after loss. A girl goes missing from the county fair, and her sister is still searching for her a year later; a soldier returns home from war only to plant landmines in the backyard; a widower tries to dig up his wife's garden in an effort to save all he has left. (2017, West Virginia University Press/Vandalia Press). 

The Whole World at Once: Book Giveaway on LibraryThing

This is just a quick reminder for those readers who don't follow my Facebook or Twitter (hint, hint) that there is one day left to enter to win a copy of The Whole World at Once from Library Thing. Enter by July 18th, 2017 (7:58 PM) for your chance to have luck draw your name to receive this book in your mailbox one soon summer day.

The Whole World at Once is a collection of stories that revolve around loss and take place in the strange, placeless rural Midwest.

The Whole World at Once at Montana Book Festival

Got the good word that I'll be at the 2017 Montana Book Festival in Missoula. So, mark your calendars, friends.

September 27-October 1

I'll provide more information as I get it. Hope to see you there!

http://www.montanabookfestival.org

First Friday Spokane: Hypothesis at the Richmond Art Collective

Last night, we took part in Spokane's monthly First Friday art tour by visiting the show Hypothesis held by Spokane's Richmond Art Collective. Our friend Ira Gardner is a member of the collective and was showing some of his recent photography, so we wanted to learn what his mind has been up to behind the lens.

The Richmond Art Collective uses a small gallery in the space behind Spaceman Coffee, on Sprague. Above the gallery are art studios where the artists do their work. The show was well attended, and the space added a heat and energy to the experience of meeting the artists' work, which ranged from photography to sculpture to installation to painting. The arts potluck nature of the gathering provided a little something for everyone and couldn't help, I imagine, but cause interesting discussions afterward. Next to each piece was a short background of the work and what the artist is exploring. These were written well, and helped attach the artist's questioning experience in a way that was interesting and not didactic or patronizing. Ira said that one of the ideas behind the show, or driving it, is for the artists to share their work with each other and every three months, share their work again, and start affecting each other's work by this sharing. Hypothesis. Transformation. How? In what way? How fundamental these words are to art and seemed clearly underlying the work chosen for the show. It will be interesting to see how the work starts intersecting as time passes because the artists all seem unlike one another, not in their questioning, but in the way they question through their mediums.

Ira Gardner showed two pieces, both black and white still-lifes of a leaf and pine branch. The lighting and placement of the pieces transformed the pieces into a kind of metal sculpture that blurred both the medium and the viewer's relationship to nature. Are we looking at a photograph of a sculpture of a leaf or a leaf? Is there a difference? Is the leaf both art object and sculpture? It made me wonder about meditative space, and what kind of mental silence art automatically creates by the fact of itself for the viewer. Perhaps something like the white space on a page for poets, the darkness that falls between scenes of a film, or the silence of the ellipses that Samuel Beckett used to his advantage and turned into a tool of transformation.

This quiet space that art itself brings with it had been on my mind because of the conversation that happened on the drive to the gallery. We were explaining to our three-year old why people would be more quiet than usual at the art gallery.
Why? he said.
Because, I said--trying to think it through myself--Because in our culture, people have a tendency to be quiet as a sign of reverence. Like in the library, people are quiet around the books because they appreciate the books. The books are important to them.
A few beats later, I remembered concentration. Everyone moving along the walls, looking and thinking.
And concentration, I said. We are quiet so we can think about what we are looking at.

And we were. Everyone moving around each other to get to the art. Stepping back, stepping forward. Our bodies turning into sculptures themselves that we moved around, giving each other space and silence, and the quiet goodness of seeing people we knew amidst the art, and then the space transforming somehow to allow us to speak, and then return to the meditative as we separated and became different versions of ourselves again. As though caught by light, made central in the eye of another, and then let go.

Richmond Art Collective

228 West Sprague

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RACSpokane/

June 30: The Whole World at Once at BookPeople in Austin, TX

Got my haircut today, packing tomorrow, and then I'll return to Texas where I lived for nearly a decade, all begun in 2003 when I moved to San Marcos to attend the MFA in Fiction program. So many of my favorite faces still in live in Texas, and I'll be happy to see them again and meet yours if our faces haven't met yet. I have a full heart. Let's pin our hearts to our sleeves and let them look at each other.

I'll read a few selections from The Whole World at Once, followed by a conversation with Owen Egerton. The event begins at 7 PM, this Friday, June 30. The event is free and so very welcoming to the public.

BookPeople Marquee, photo by Wendy Walker
(Used with permission)

BookPeople
603 North Lamar Blvd
Austin, TX 78703
(512) 472-5050
Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/412524905801089

Fictions and Words in Austin, Austin, Austin, Texas! June 30, 2017 & July 1, 2017

BookPeople (photograph from BookPeople)

This is the wonderful week that I'm travelling to Austin to take part in writing-related affairs. On Friday, June 30 at 7 PM, I'll be reading at BookPeople, followed by a discussion with Owen Egerton about writing, grief, and my new book of beautiful, strange fictions, The Whole World at Once.

Then, on Saturday afternoon, I'm joining a group of fine folk at the Agents and Editors Conference to discuss working with independent publishers. The Agents and Editors Conference is organized by The Writers' League of Texas.

Let's say goodbye to June and greet July together in the best of cities, Austin, Texas. And maybe dance and get a Texas tattoo and sing to the moon.


Friday, June 30
BookPeople
603 North Lamar Blvd.
Austin, TX
Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/412524905801089
Free and open to the public

Saturday, July 1
Agents and Editors Conference
Hyatt Regency
208 Barton Springs Rd.
Austin, TX
Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/170358963428943
Attendees must register to participate in this three-day conference.

Austin, Texas is the coolest place in the U.S.

The Whole World at Once at BookPeople
photograph by Laura Long

While also being the hottest. So, let's meet in the sweet, sweet air-conditioning of Austin's
wonderful bookstore, BookPeople.

Friday, June 30
7 PM

I'll read one or two selections from The Whole World at Once, followed by a live Q&A with Owen Egerton about the writing of the book, fictions, and more.

Please add me to your calendar. I'll love to see your face.

BookPeople
603 North Lamar Blvd
Austin, TX 78703
(512) 472-5050

Event is free and open to the public.

This June Thursday: Hugo House Reading, Seattle

If you're in the Seattle area tomorrow night (Thursday, 6/15), make plans to attend a wonderful evening of words presented by The Hugo House. The Hugo House is one of Seattle's best literary resources, providing writing space, lectures, events, and resources to community members as well as hosting near and far writers to keep the words flowing to and from the region.

Thursday's reading is at 7 PM and will feature four Washington writers: two poets, two fiction writers.

• Gary Copeland Lilley (listen to this interview with him from KPTZ 91.9)
• Ann Tweedy (her website, here: http://anntweedy.com/)
• Sharma Shields (her website, here: http://www.sharmashields.com/)
• Erin Pringle (you're here, at my website)

Address: 1021 Columbia Street, Seattle, WA 98104

Need directions? Click here.

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/2202785066624674

Event is free and open to the public.

Book Magic and Win The Whole World at Once on Goodreads

"Lucky Horseshoe" by Hillary H via Flickr,
used under CC license

Because I grew up as pretty much an only child, with siblings decades older than me, I read books alone, and didn't really discuss them with anyone. And I loved to read. Loved the way the images moved through my mind, the whole experience--even going to the library itself was marvelous, and all the librarians knew me, of course. I don't remember talking with them about the books I was reading.

Maybe I stopped talking about books, or thought I shouldn't, when I checked out a teenage romance when I was in first grade, and the librarian informed me that the book didn't have any pictures.
I know, I said.
Or wanted to say.
Probably I said nothing.
But I checked it out on my mother's card or maybe, by then, my own yellow card. And I read it, and then refused to go into the "children's section" after that.

This eventually led to my belief that books were like these wonderful secrets made just for you. The idea of a book club is completely antithetical to my way of experiencing and thinking about books. Talking about books out loud somehow kills the magic. Why would anyone do it?

I am slowly understanding book clubs, but it still makes me nervous for someone to recommend a book to me or ask me what I'm reading.
Oh, you know, I'll say.

Stuff, I'll say.

Dead authors, I'll say. And Jack Kaulfus, I'll say. Which is true.

So, you probably already know about these giant, virtual book clubs, like LibraryThing or Goodreads. Goodreads is like the book-readers version of social networking. You can rate books, leave reviews, chat about books, recommend books to friends, attend Q&As with authors.

It's a terrifying place.

Unless part of your reading experience is a social one, which probably it is. And that's good, right? Because you and me, we both exist, and we both read. So, here's the deal for two lucky people, or two people who are chosen amid odds that they probably won't be chosen:

From June 7, 2017-July 4, 2017, you can visit Goodreads to enter to win one of two copies of The Whole World at Once.

To enter, follow this link: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/239625

They encourage the two book winners to review the book that they win.
But I understand if that doesn't happen.
Because magic.