Meet John Pringle ...

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​How long have you been a member of NOWW? 
I've been a member of NOWW since its inception.

What do you normally write?
My preferred genre is the short story and I have written dozens of them.

Do you have a favourite book or favourite author?
If I have to pick only one, my favourite author is Cormac McCarthy. His border trilogy and the two novels following are masterpieces and I can think of no other writer that matches him in style and content.

Let’s get to know you a bit better. Tell us a bit about yourself, your writing journey and authors you’re drawn to?
I always wanted to write. Ever since I was a youngster listening to bed time stories I yearned to be able you make up engaging fictions. However, for the most part, literature on school curriculums bored me. Most 19th century novels I studied in high school were dull. Jane Austen and Charles Dickens did not impress. Dostoyevsky, Blake and Hemingway had more appeal. Aside from Dylan lyrics, it wasn’t until grade 13 and studying the Theatre of the Absurd that writing began to appeal to my personal thinking. I liked Beckett and Albee and Tennessee Williams. Once I got out of school Henry Miller blew my mind. He was all about personal liberation. The tone was confessional, honest, and it transcended morality. I liked that. Then I wanted to be a poet and a song writer and failed miserably. In my early thirties I spent a winter at a cabin, alone. Although I had little ability, I began to paint and then write. I sent a bundle of stories off to Grain Magazine and they accepted one. Charles Wilkins liked a story of mine and included it in The Wolf’s Eye. I joined the Thunder Bay Writers Guild and learned how to be more objective with my own writing as well as others. I’m still at it and if I don’t write every day, I certainly think about writing and the story I am working on.

Share your best writing tips:
Fiction works if it has energy and emotion. Learn how to rewrite.

Can we see you at any upcoming NOWW events?
I hope to be attending some NOWW events this winter. I hosted a book launch at the Waverley Library for my new collection of short stories, Spirals, Stories of Northwestern Ontario.  I am also giving a Critique Workshop with other members of the Thunder Bay Writers Guild on March 14th at the Waverley Library.
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Where can we learn more about you and your writing?
I suppose members can learn more about me by reading my stories, writing to me at jpringle@nwon.com or engaging me in conversation. I do not have a website or any other Internet address. My only previously published collection, The Truth Ratio by Emmerson Street Press, 2013, is now out of print but there are copies at two Thunder Bay libraries and I hope to put the book up on the web sometime in 2017. Other than that my work may be found in back issues of NOWW magazine and in anthologies by the Thunder Bay Writers Guild and in anthologies published by The Canadian Authors Association, Ten Stories High. Two anthologies published by Thunder Books in the 1990s also feature my work. Those books are entitled The Wolf’s Eye and Flying Colours

And to end things off, tell us something surprising about yourself!
​Facts that may surprise: I am a hunter, a fisherman, and a gardener and try to follow the paleo diet. Although many of my fictional characters consume alcohol and abuse drugs, I no longer do either. I wrote a book of non-fiction last winter about the ground-breaking psychological insight of Canadian philosopher Sydney Banks. That surprised me. I will probably never publish it out of fear readers might think I am a New Age flake. Here’s a surprise: I admire Jesus, Buddha, Henry Miller and Bob Dylan, not necessarily in that order.

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