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.

We hope you’ll join us for a Pie & Whiskey near you. Or throw your own. Or check out the book and enjoy our meditations on sugar and booze. As the Irish say, “What butter and whiskey won’t cure, there is no cure for.”

Yours in sweet corruption,

Kate and Sam