Booksmith is proud to host Peg Alford Pursell as she celebrates the publication of her debut book, Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow. She'll read and be in conversation with Grant Faulkner. Join us!
A collection of prose poetry, flash fiction, microfiction, and hybrid prose, Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow is “a small but fiercely sacred book, immense in its gifts.” – Melissa Pritchard
In a matter of a few words, a few lines, Pursell transports us into vivid situations of loss and longing. This is a dazzling and lovely collection. – Margot Livesey, author of Mercury and The Flight of Gemma Hardy
What intense bits of insight these are – dramas, both painful and lyrical, are captured in these superb concentrations of prose, with their flashes of brilliant detail. An original book, with a long, shimmering after-effect. – Joan Silber, author of Fools and Ideas of Heaven
To call this volume "slim" would be a mistake. It is rich in the way of poetry – lyric intensity applied to the small wonders of the world – and resonant in the way of music, summoning again and again the mysterious visceral response from its reader. – Antonya Nelson, author of Funny Once and Bound
I read Show Her the way you read in a dream, the way you see that flickering in the corner of your eye which means you're haunted. Highly recommended. – Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside
I've always firmly believed that the amount of words a story contains has zero to do with how much weight the story carries. Show Her A Flower, A Bird, A Shadow proves this once again, and proves it in spades... These stories are like gut checks to the soul. – Peter Orner, author of Am I Alone Here? and Love and Shame and Love
Peg Alford Pursell is the author of Show Her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow (ELJ Editions). Her work has been published in the Journal of Compressed Arts, Forklift Ohio, and VOLT, among many others, and shortlisted for the Flannery O’Connor Award. She directs Why There Are Words, a national neighborhood of reading series she founded in Sausalito in 2010, and is the director and founder of WTAW Press, an independent publisher of literary books. She lives in Northern California.
Grant Faulkner likes big stories and small stories. He is Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. His stories and essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, The Southwest Review, PANK, and Gargoyle. He’s recently published a collection of one hundred 100-word stories, Fissures, two of which are included in Best Small Fictions 2016. He has a book of essays on creativity coming out with Chronicle Books in the fall of 2017.
RSVP appreciated but not required. If you cannot attend the event, but would like to request a signed copy of Show Her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow, please order below and put your request in the comments field.