Praise for Unexpected Weather Events
In Erin Pringle’s breathtaking
story collection UNEXPECTED WEATHER EVENTS ghosts arrive on wintry nights, the
sky bleeds red snow, a hole opens up between heaven and hell, and characters
learn to grieve, to laugh, to love, even as the harrowing world around them
shudders and quakes with loss. The themes and tone in these pages—at turns
deadpan and compassionate, always wise and complex—converse beautifully with
the fiction of Miriam Toews and Agota Kristof. This book reminded me: We are
not alone in our sorrow; there are always new ways—even in a petrifying
darkness—to see and to love.”
— Sharma Shields, author of THE CASSANDRA
“The perfectly paced, lyrical stories in Erin Pringle’s UNEXPECTED WEATHER EVENTS deeply and deftly explore how, after personal tragedy, beautiful
images can not only save us but also keep us tethered to the world.”
— Rachel King, author of BRATWURST HAVEN: STORIES
“Erin Pringle is my favorite living author. This breathtaking new collection more than solidifies that opinion. Her writing is soul-rich with wonder and terror, tapping into a child’s dream-like experience of family, change, and death. These are not only stories; each piece is a spell swirling with grief, love, and the bitter-strong beauty of being alive.”
— Owen Egerton, author of HOLLOW and HOW BEST TO AVOID DYING
“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
“Erin Pringle crafts an immersive, vivid world where time can linger, sit down, or turn itself inside out as characters survive the beautiful complications and layers of their lives. These stories visit the tender space between the living and the dead, between right now and memory, between reality and dreams. There are ghosts and shadows and memories and forewarnings as the people inside these stories face the hardest parts of being human—climate change, cancer, suicide, war—while finding love and meaning in the sweet impermanence of safety.”
— Liz Rognes, singer/songwriter RED FLAGS and TOPOGRAPHIES
“Deep, rich, and beautiful— Erin Pringle has a knack for capturing the details of daily life as those lives are forever altered: the smell of snow, the surprise cancer diagnosis, the joy of valentines. the lost father, new boyfriend, meanness and kindness, With these stories, she brings clarity to chaos, light into darkness.”
— Melissa Stephenson, author of DRIVEN
“In prose rich in metaphor, Pringle masterfully and hauntingly narrates the interior lives of children and adults facing life’s greatest struggles. Pringle’s characters are inspiring and courageous as they encounter unthinkable catastrophes. In these stories, we see from the eyes of children watching a parent die from cancer, witnessing a parent’s ongoing struggle with mental illness and the debilitating effects of medication, and experiencing a holocaust-like mass killing of residents in their town. We see adult characters who escaped horrific childhoods question the viability of their own happy lives to the point that everything begins to crumble. Pringle’s stories deftly and unsentimentally address heartbreaking and sometimes taboo topics like the grief of miscarriage and the destructive force of homophobia. Often, the lines between reality and delusion blur, and the reader becomes unnervingly ensnared in the protagonist’s confusion. Many of the stories are quintessentially Midwestern, infused with wide cornfields and an ethos of practicality and personal limitation that is brought into stark relief by Pringle’s uncritical presentation. Pringle’s many gifts as a writer are in full force here. Particularly striking is Pringle’s ability to powerfully and convincingly evoke a child’s point of view. As always, Pringle’s work will break you open and at the same time fortify you.”
— Ann Tweedy, author of THE BODY'S ALPHABET
— Sharma Shields, author of THE CASSANDRA
“The perfectly paced, lyrical stories in Erin Pringle’s UNEXPECTED WEATHER EVENTS deeply and deftly explore how, after personal tragedy, beautiful
images can not only save us but also keep us tethered to the world.”
— Rachel King, author of BRATWURST HAVEN: STORIES
“Erin Pringle is my favorite living author. This breathtaking new collection more than solidifies that opinion. Her writing is soul-rich with wonder and terror, tapping into a child’s dream-like experience of family, change, and death. These are not only stories; each piece is a spell swirling with grief, love, and the bitter-strong beauty of being alive.”
— Owen Egerton, author of HOLLOW and HOW BEST TO AVOID DYING
“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
“Erin Pringle crafts an immersive, vivid world where time can linger, sit down, or turn itself inside out as characters survive the beautiful complications and layers of their lives. These stories visit the tender space between the living and the dead, between right now and memory, between reality and dreams. There are ghosts and shadows and memories and forewarnings as the people inside these stories face the hardest parts of being human—climate change, cancer, suicide, war—while finding love and meaning in the sweet impermanence of safety.”
— Liz Rognes, singer/songwriter RED FLAGS and TOPOGRAPHIES
“Deep, rich, and beautiful— Erin Pringle has a knack for capturing the details of daily life as those lives are forever altered: the smell of snow, the surprise cancer diagnosis, the joy of valentines. the lost father, new boyfriend, meanness and kindness, With these stories, she brings clarity to chaos, light into darkness.”
— Melissa Stephenson, author of DRIVEN
“In prose rich in metaphor, Pringle masterfully and hauntingly narrates the interior lives of children and adults facing life’s greatest struggles. Pringle’s characters are inspiring and courageous as they encounter unthinkable catastrophes. In these stories, we see from the eyes of children watching a parent die from cancer, witnessing a parent’s ongoing struggle with mental illness and the debilitating effects of medication, and experiencing a holocaust-like mass killing of residents in their town. We see adult characters who escaped horrific childhoods question the viability of their own happy lives to the point that everything begins to crumble. Pringle’s stories deftly and unsentimentally address heartbreaking and sometimes taboo topics like the grief of miscarriage and the destructive force of homophobia. Often, the lines between reality and delusion blur, and the reader becomes unnervingly ensnared in the protagonist’s confusion. Many of the stories are quintessentially Midwestern, infused with wide cornfields and an ethos of practicality and personal limitation that is brought into stark relief by Pringle’s uncritical presentation. Pringle’s many gifts as a writer are in full force here. Particularly striking is Pringle’s ability to powerfully and convincingly evoke a child’s point of view. As always, Pringle’s work will break you open and at the same time fortify you.”
— Ann Tweedy, author of THE BODY'S ALPHABET
"This is another heavy read, and may not be for those who are more empathetic and sensitive to certain issues surrounding death, among other things. But more than anything else, UNEXPECTED WEATHER EVENTS deals with our sense of control – or rather, our illusion of such a thing. Instead, it shows how to weave through the cracks and do our best to fill them with gold, much like the Japanese art and philosophy of kintsugi."
— Kzinga Jimenez, Books of Brilliance
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| Cover design by LK James |
Hezada! I Miss
You (2020,
Awst Press)
About: The last Midwestern traveling circus is due to
arrive in a rural village it has visited for a century of summers. Like the
village, the circus is on its last leg. It’s down to one elephant and a handful
of acrobats. The circus boss’s sweetheart is dying. The former starring act is
recovering from cancer. The assistant, Frank, plans to retire after this show.
Meanwhile, twins Heza and Abe wander the hot fields and roads, waiting for the
circus or anything better. Hezada! I Miss You is a novel that explores
tradition, love, and suicide—set under the fading tents of small-town America
and the circus.
- Finalist, 2021 CLMP Firecracker Award
- Shelf Unbound 2021 Best Indie Book - 100 Notable
Praise for Hezada! I Miss You
"It's haunting. It's lovely. It's an utterly painful and beautiful look at how life passes. Exploring the consequences of a suicide from those intimately involved to those on the sidelines, Pringle's unflinching view sets a summer circus as a backdrop for everything lost when life is gone." - The Austin Chronicle
"Mournful, funny, piercing, and profound, Erin Pringle's Hezada, I Miss
You is a stirring, vivid novel [and] breathtaking work of art." - Sharma Shields, author of The Cassandra
"This novel is a lovely meditation on how the inevitability of
change and loss is sustained by nostalgia and memory, and survived by that
quiet beat of hope that lives in us all." - Donna Miscolta, author of Hola and Goodbye
"Set against the fascinating backdrop of a traveling circus, Hezada, I Miss You is a meditation on sorrow—how people deal with it, how they attempt to escape from it, and how, for some, it’s inescapable. It’s a tender novel that should be read slowly, each line given the careful consideration it deserves for the beautiful, heartbreaking insights it holds." - Rajia Hassib, author of In the Language of Miracles and A Pure Heart
"Brilliant. A heart-wrench of a debut novel. The writing cuts right to the bone, with cadences that sing. Reminiscent of Bradbury and Sherwood Anderson, Pringle's Hezada! I Miss You is a kaleidoscopic vision of love, desire, loss – and life." ~ Regi Claire, author of Fighting It and two-time finalist for Saltire Scottish Book of the Year.
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The Whole World at Once (2017, West Virginia UP/Vandalia Press)About: Set within a backdrop of small towns and hard-working communities in middle America, The Whole World at Once is a collection of intense stories about the experience of loss.
From Kirkus Reviews: “Readers willing to immerse themselves in sorrow, and sometimes in narratives that twist and shimmer before taking definite shape, will find reflected in these stories the unsteady path of coming back to life—or not—after loss.”
From The Wall Street Journal: You can feel that Ms. Pringle has labored over her sentences, giving them the strength of tempered steel. She has a knack for the cinematic image as well.
From Journal Gazette and Times Courier: "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."
From Story366: "My time with Erin Pringle’s stories in The Whole World at Once was well spent. Pringle writes haunting, stark narratives that send her characters out to investigate what they can’t understand, be it a snowy ravine, the death of another, or the imminent death of the self. Curiosity is a solid trigger for any story, and Pringle handles her sleuths with an adept hand, getting close enough to look over their shoulder, though not close enough that we know their names. Mortality, and their existential relationship with it, makes for some tremendous pondering."
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Cover photograph
Cover design by TRP
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The Floating Order (2009, Two Ravens Press)
About: The Floating Order is Erin’s debut collection of short stories that was originally
published in 2009 by Two Ravens Press, a small press run out of
Northern Scotland until its closure in 2015. No longer in print.
"'poetic, lush, gripping'" American Short Fiction
"A collection of rather disturbing short stories. 'Enjoyed' really wouldn't be the right word. 'Impressed' would be nearer the mark."~ Scott Pack, The Friday Project
"There are no safe, saccharine fairy tale endings. This is
contemporary Brothers Grimm for adults." ~ Pauline
Masurel, The
Short Review
"It is no mean achievement to sustain such a story-like lyricism
over the long haul of a book-length collection. This is a remarkable
debut. A keeper that keeps keeping on.”
~ Michael Martone, author
of Michael Martone
The wonder of The Floating Order [. . .] is that it is impossible to pigeonhole. At their heart the stories have a darkly fantastic edge, but this aspect is more often than not a component of the character's view of the outside world.~ John Kenny, co-editor of Aeon Press and Albedo One
“The stories in Erin Pringle’s first collection possess the charm of fairy tales, the wisdom of poems, the hope of prayers, the weight of eulogies, and the intimacy of letters home.” ~Tom Noyes, author of Spooky
Action at a Distance and Other Stories
"There are no easy answers in The Floating Order, only
a sense of disturbance and dread,
offset by flashes of beauty. In this way, the book traps
life in the 21st century and displays it in all its awful radiance."
~Southwestern
American Literature
"Just as her stories thrive on a kind of profitable
restlessness, The Floating Order feels significant by virtue
of its narrative, structural and thematic variety." ~John Regan, Women: A
Cultural Review
Full reviews:
- Austin
Chronicle - "The
Great Escape"
- Dan
Powell Fiction - "Short Story Challenge"
- John
Kenny - "Book Review: The Floating Order" (April 2012)
- The
Reading Experience - "I Wouldn't Explain" by Daniel Green
- Size
Matters: The Mini-Comic Blog - Review of "The Only Child" by
Shawn Hoke
- The
Short Review - Review by Pauline Masurel
- Southwestern
American Literature (Fall 2009) - Review on The Floating Order by
Margo Wilson, XXXV,1: 89
- Texas
Books in Review (Summer 2009) - Review by Rene LeBlanc, Vol XXIX,
No 2.
- Women:
A Cultural Review - "More Than Women and Cats" by John Regan, Volume 22,
Issues 2-3, p 278-281
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