Pie & Whiskey
Thurs, Nov 21, 5:30-7:30pm, 2019
About Pie & Whiskey by Kate Lebo and Sam Ligon
Learn the art of making pie + drinking whiskey with Kate Lebo and Samuel Ligon @ PIE & WHISKEY on THURS, NOV 21, 5:30pm Sign up @ info@methowartsalliance.org, tickets available through Methow Arts. There are only 12 spots for Pie School participants and more for whiskey bystanders.
To award-winning baker and writer Kate Lebo, baking pie is a journey in fruit, flour and butter, served with a dollop of poetry and a pinch of sass. Tie on an apron and join her in Pie School, for creations as stirring as Blueberry Lemon Verbena Galette, Cheddar-Crusted Apple Pie and Whiskey Maple Pecan Pie. School has never been this much fun!
But first join Kate and Sam at Trail’s End Bookstore on WED, NOV 20, 6:30pm. for a reading from their book, Pie & Whisky, Writers under the Influence of Butter & Booze. Read below for more information.
TICKETS: $65/ Pie School with Kate Lebo – includes hands-on Pie Instruction, Lebo’s cookbooks, pie tasting, whiskey and supplies for pie dough. $35/Whiskey drinker and bystander. DATE: Reading @ Trail’s End Bookstore, Wed, Nov 20; Pie & Whiskey class, Thurs, Nov 21 @ Methow Arts, 204 Glover Street, Twisp, WA. CONTACT: info@methowartsalliance.org, 509-997-4004.
Pie & Whiskey, the book, is a literary collection of readings presented over the past six years in Spokane, WA, and Missoula, MT, at Pie & Whiskey, the event, run by Kate Lebo and Samuel Ligon. Writers like Jess Walter, J Robert Lennon, Kim Barnes, and ML Smoker were invited to generate new work based on prompts that involve pie or whiskey or both. Sam and Kate figured that good writing served with a slice of pie and a shot of whiskey would create an energized atmosphere uncommon at literary events. The contributors, drawn mainly from the west, but not exclusively, responded with surprising, funny, heartbreaking, fantastically written stories and poems. The book will include a smattering of pie recipes and whiskey-centric cocktails. Look here for tasty literary servings.
KATE LEBO is the author of Pie School and A Commonplace Book of Pie. Her essay “The Loudproof Room” appeared in New England Review and was chosen for Best American Essays 2015. Her poems, essays, and recipes have appeared in Best New Poets, Gastronomica, the Washington Post, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She lives in Spokane, Washington.
SAMUEL LIGON is the author of two novels—Among the Dead and Dreaming and Safe in Heaven Dead—and two collections of stories, Wonderland, illustrated by Stephen Knezovich, and Drift and Swerve. He edits the journal Willow Springs, teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane, and is artistic director of the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference. Ligon lives in Spokane, Washington.
Pie & Whiskey started in 2012 as a reading in Spokane, Washington. The idea was to serve good pie, good whiskey, and good writers reading prose or poetry about pie and whiskey. We thought there was something right about the combination—pie in your left hand, whiskey in your right. We thought there was something weirdly American about it, too—Saturday night debauch meets Sunday morning brunch. Cowboys don’t walk into saloons and order gin. We don’t say, “American as motherhood and apple cake.”
By serving up great writing and sugary, boozy treats, we create a social space where the audience engages in a kind of conspiracy with the writers, the writers are also audience members, and the writers and the audience feed off each other, all of us eating homemade pie and drinking good, local whiskey. This night is for adults only, which means we can be entirely adolescent as we read and listen to stories about bad breakups and bad sex and good sex and bad drugs and good drugs and church and politics and whiskey and pie and everything else that happens after the kiddies go to bed.
Five years, eight readings, 500 gallons of whiskey, and 30,000 square feet of pie later, we’re proud to present an anthology of the best pieces from our first half-decade, plus new work from some of our favorite writers today.