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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."
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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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