Eric Shonkwiler Author Event

Eric Shonkwiler is coming to Prologue Bookshop on Thursday, October 22, for a conversation about his new book, Red Prepper. He'll be joined by a local activist to talk through the ideas in the book, and the whole thing runs from 6:30 to 7:30 PM.

If you've never heard the term, prepping usually brings to mind the doomsday industry—bunkers, stockpiles, and a certain kind of end-of-the-world paranoia. Red Prepper takes that practice and pulls it in a different direction. Shonkwiler describes it as a leftist's guide to prepping, one that reframes the whole thing as a tool for collective resilience rather than individual survival. It's a survival guide for the modern activist, with practical advice on building a pantry, filtering water when infrastructure fails, and organizing neighbors for mutual aid. The focus is on taking care of each other when things go sideways, rather than just taking care of yourself.

Shonkwiler is well-positioned to write this. He's an award-winning author and a security professional, and he runs the preparedness newsletter When/If. Before that, he spent years as a Director of Security and Emergency Preparedness officer right here in Columbus, where he guided public health and hospital facilities through the COVID-19 pandemic and led large-scale mass-casualty exercises. He's also a former 911 dispatcher with an MFA from UC Riverside, and his commentary on emergency preparedness has appeared in The Guardian and CNN. On the fiction side, he's written the novels Above All Men and 8th Street Power & Light, along with the story collection Moon Up, Past Full, which earned the Coil Book Award and a Midwest Connections' Pick.

The event is at Prologue Bookshop, 787 North High Street, from 6:30 to 7:30 PM. General admission is free, and there's a $24 ticket that includes a copy of Red Prepper.