HAMBURG, N.Y. – The Hilbert College English department presents Ann Pancake, an award winning novelist and short story writer. Pancake will read from and discuss her novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been, on Wednesday, May 1 at 7:30 p.m. in William E. Swan Auditorium on the Hilbert campus. Admission is free. Advance reservations are requested, please call 716-926-8856 or email hughes@hilbert.edu.
Strange As This Weather Has Been (Counterpoint 2007) was Pancake’s first novel. It features a southern West Virginia family devastated by mountaintop removal mining. Based on interviews and real events, the novel was one of Kirkus Review's Top Ten Fiction Books of 2007, won the 2007 Weatherford Award, and was a finalist for the 2008 Orion Book Award.
Pancake’s collection of short stories, Given Ground, won the 2000 Bakeless award, and she has also received a Whiting Award, an NEA Grant, a Pushcart Prize, and creative writing fellowships from the states of Washington, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Her fiction and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies like The Georgia Review, Poets and Writers, Narrative, and New Stories from the South. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English at West Virginia University and a doctorate in English Literature from the University of Washington.
She now lives in Seattle and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University. Currently, she is finishing a new short story collection.