Eric Shonkwiler | RED PREPPER | Presented by Sidetrack Bookshop

Author Eric Shonkwiler leads a tabletop drill practicing collective resiliance in the face of any disaster. Through the lens of a forecasted monster winter storm, we'll work through the lessons of Red Prepper. Learn how to care for yourself and your neighbors when disaster strikes. You'll make connections and help build a network of friendly, neighborhood, leftist preppers.

Date: Thursday, December 3, 2026, 6:30pm - 7:30pm. Doors open at 6:00pm.

Location: Sidetrack Bookshop, 325 S. Washington Ave., Royal Oak, MI 48067

Tickets:

• $26.25 - Includes one ticket to the workshop and signing line and one copy of Red Prepper.
• $5 - Includes one ticket to the workshop

Additional copies of Red Prepper will be available for purchase at the event (while supplies last).

Parking in the Center Street Parking Garage located just north of Sidetrack Bookshop with entrances on both Washington and Center Streets is free for the first two hours and costs only 75 cents per hour thereafter, Monday through Saturday.

Please read on for more information.

About Red Prepper

For decades, the right has monopolized the culture of preparedness, selling a fantasy of rugged individualism, hoarded rations, and fear. But before the rise of 24-hour grocery stores and just-in-time supply chains, prepping wasn't a political statement: it was just life.

Drawing on his background in emergency services and security, Eric Shonkwiler reclaims prepping from the paranoia of the doomsday industry and reframes it as a vital tool for collective resilience. Red Prepper is a survival guide for the modern activist, bridging the gap between personal safety and community action, teaching you how to build a "deep pantry," filter water during infrastructure failures, and organize your neighbors for mutual aid.

With the rise of fascism and the approach of economic and environmental collapse, Shonkwiler provides the grounded, practical skills you need to stop worrying and start building something better in the rubble.

About Eric Shonkwiler

Eric Shonkwiler is an award-winning author, security professional and creator of the long-running preparedness newsletter When/If. He is the author of the novels Above All Men and 8th Street Power & Light, and the story collection Moon Up, Past Full, which earned the Coil Book Award and a Midwest Connections’ Pick. After serving as a 911 dispatcher and earning his MFA from UC Riverside, he spent years as a Director of Security and Emergency Preparedness officer in Columbus, Ohio, guiding public health and hospital facilities through the COVID-19 pandemic and large-scale mass-casualty exercises. His work and commentary on emergency preparedness has been featured in The Guardian and CNN.