Ann Pancake

Welcome

2007-05-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Ann Pancake's official website; thanks for stopping by and please take a look around.

Be sure to take a look at the Readings page for various appearances in the next few months.

Follow the progress of Ann's novel and its reviews. Read all about it.

Readings

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July 26-31: Appalachian Writers' Workshop, Hindman Settlement School

September 11, 2009: Keynote at Carolina Mountains Literary Festival, Burnsville, NC

September 14, 2009: Appalachian State University, Boone, NC

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(past)

January 14, 2008: Benaroya Hall, Seattle, WA. 5:30 p.m. Preliminary reading with Lyanda Haupt for the Seattle Arts and Lectures Series. (Celebration of Artist Trust’s 20th Anniversary.)
January 24: Village Books, Bellingham, WA. 7 p.m.
February 15: Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR--the Valley Library Main Rotunda. 7:30 p.m.
March 26: University of Idaho--Administration Building Auditorium, Moscow, ID. 7:30 p.m.
April 22: Eastern Kentucky University, Library, Crabbe Library--Richmond, KY. 6:30 p.m.
April 24: Loyola College, 4th floor program room, Andrew White Student Center, 4501 North Charles St.--Baltimore, MD. 5 p.m. (410-617-2228)
April 26: Reading and signing at Borders Books--Winchester, VA. 5-7 p.m.
April 27: Bottling Works--Romney, WV. 2 p.m.
May 13: Edmonds Community College--Edmonds, WA. 12:30 p.m.
June 12-15: Chatauqua Literary Festival--Chatauqua, NY.
August 21: Chicago Public Library, Lincoln Park branch--Chicago, IL. 7:30 p.m.
September 17: No Comment reading series, Shoebox Theatre (1401 18th Ave.)--Seattle, WA 7:30 p.m.
October 11: West Virginia Book Festival, Charleston Civic Center--Charleston, WV. Noon.
October 12: Meigs County Library, Pomeroy branch--Pomeroy, OH. 2 p.m.
October 16: Penn State Erie, Smith Chapel--Erie, PA. 6 p.m.
October 19: Society of Environmental Journalists Conference--Roanoke, VA.
October 20th: Radford University, Muse Banquet Hall--Radford, VA. 7 p.m.
October 22: Lynchburg College, Alumni Lounge--Lynchburg, VA. 7:30 p.m.
November 12: Hamline University--Minneapolis, MN. 7:30 p.m.
November 13th: Public interview, Hamline University--Minneapolis, MN. 7:30 p.m.
February 10: Chatham College--Pittsburgh, PA--8:00 p.m.
March 29: Washington County Public Library, Abbingdon, VA--3:00 p.m.
March 30: Emory and Henry College, Emory, VA--7:00 p.m.
April 1: Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, TN--Reception at 5:30 p.m., reading at 6:00.
April 2: East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN--7:00 p.m.

Biography

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Ann Pancake grew up in Romney and Summersville, WV. Her first novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been (Counterpoint 2007), features a southern West Virginia family devastated by mountaintop removal mining. Based on interviews and real events, the novel was one of KirkusReview'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 Glimmer Train, Poets andWriters, Narrative, and New Stories from the South. She earned her BA in English at West Virginia University and a PhD. in English Literaturefrom the University of Washington. Currently, she teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.

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See reviews and links to other sites below...

Strange As This Weather Has Been features a West Virginian town in the midst of the latest coal boom, and plagued by the mountaintop removal strip mining that is ruining what is left of their mountain life. As the mine turns the mountains to dust and wastewater, workers struggle with layoffs and children find adventure in the blasted moonscape craters. And down below, the hollow’s inhabitants live with the constant threat of a black flood that could wash out their world without notice.

This story of lives suspended by danger is delivered through the perspectives of several members of one family—a couple and their four children—with a particular focus on fifteen-year-old Bant and her mother, Lace. Working at a “scab” motel, Bant becomes involved with a young miner while her mother contemplates joining the fight against the mine owners. As domestic conflicts escalate, the children are pushed more and more outside among junk from the floods and felled trees—the only nature the youngest ones have ever known. But Bant has other memories and is as curious and strong-willed as her mother. Ultimately, through her eyes, we come to discover the very real threat of destruction that looms in the landscape and in her home. Based on interviews and real events, and magnificently drawn together by Ann Pancake, the stories of these people merge and finally explode into a harrowing, yet life-affirming, conclusion.

The novel is published by Shoemaker and Hoard/Counterpoint.

About the cover: "The Agony of Gaia" is a sculpture by Jeff-Chapman Crane, photographed by James Archambeault

Find the book at a local indie bookstore near you, with Booksense. (http://www.booksense.com/)
If you don't have a bookstore near you, you can get it from Amazon.com.
Podcast: Hear Ann read on the acclaimed program A River & Sound Review (Episode 13)

Reviews and Awards

Finalist, Washington State Book Award
Finalist, Orion Magazine 2008 Book Awards
Weatherford Award--Best work of fiction/poetry about Appalachia published in 2007, Appalachian Studies Assn.
Appalachian Heritage--"[The characters'] individual desires and struggles are gutsy, funny, heartbreaking, and entertainingly peculiar."
Chicago Tribune "... filled with wisdom and fire and grace..."
The Appalachian Voice "...graced with original thinking, deep insight, long emotional range..."
Orion Magazine "... Pancake’s novel is shockingly pure, like holding gold in your hands..."
The Stranger ". . . the structure of a classical tragedy, a choice that is no choice: sacrifice the thing you love most, or be destroyed."
Louisville Courier-Journal "...a story about vision -- what we choose to see and not to see."
CreativeLoafing.com: Second review down
Booklist Editors' Choice 2007
Kirkus Review Top Ten Fiction of 2007
Booklist's Top 10 First Novels of 2007
Interview: Herald-Dispatch, Huntington, WV
New York Times Sunday Book Review "... powerful, sure-footed and haunting..."
Editor's Choice
O Magazine (Yes, that O), October issue (not online yet)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (scroll to NW Authors) "...emergence of a major literary talent."
Publisher's Weekly (scroll way, way down) "...one doubts neither the characters' voices nor their places in a very complex poverty."
Booklist via Amazon.com--Starred Review ("...evinces a poetic pathos and authentic respect for the land and the people who love it."
Kirkus Reviews (must be a member...hmmm)

“Ann Pancake is Appalachia’s Steinbeck . . . Strange As This Weather Has Been is a major achievement. Not since Harriet Arnow’s The Dollmaker has a writer so truly envisioned rural poverty, rural art, rural grace, but Pancake’s book is utterly contemporary . . . a thousand miles of streams filled with toxic blast while towering slurry builds to engender the next black flood, is ongoing tragedy. It is happening now, while Lace and Jimmy Make, their stalwart daughter Bant, and their sons, slow, contemplative Dane, fated, fiery Corey and the fierce youngest, Tommy, stand shoulder to shoulder with the strongest characters created in American fiction.” —Jayne Anne Phillips, author, Black Tickets, Machine Dreams, and Motherkind

“Ann Pancake has written a novel that crackles with this century’s great background white noise of loss, greed, dishonesty—but the honest complexity of both her characters and their sometimes-beloved, othertimes-estranged or forgotten landscape yields a hope which on the surface may seem unjustified, but ends up being as durable as the spark of life itself, and then some. I was greatly impressed.” —Rick Bass, author, Hermit's Story

Published Works

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Books
-- Strange As This Weather Has Been (Novel, forthcoming from Shoemaker & Hoard, October 2007. )
-- Given Ground (A collection of short stories; The University Press of New England, 2001.) Order directly from UPNE Press.

Novel Excerpts
-- “The End of the World in Slow Motion.” Forthcoming in Narrative, Fall 2007.
-- “Pieces of God.” Kestrel, Spring 2007.
-- “Mogey.” Hunger Mountain ( Spring 2005): 58-70.

Short Stories

-- “Dog Song.” The Surreal South. Ed. Pinckney and Laura Benedict, Winston-Salem, NC: Press 53. Forthcoming, October 2007.
-- “Dog Song.” Pushcart Prize XXIX, Best of the Small Presses. Ed. Bill Henderson, Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 2005. 94-114.
-- “Coop.” Quarterly West 58 (Summer 2004): 101-105.
-- “Dog Song.” New Stories from the South, the Best of 2004. Ed. Shannon Ravenel, Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2004. 169-193.
-- “Dog Song.” Shenandoah 53.4 (Winter 2003): 5-26.
-- “Jolo.” Backcountry: Contemporary Writing in West Virginia. Ed. Irene McKinney, Morgantown, WV: WVU Press, 2002. 209-223.
-- “Redneck Boys.” Glimmer Train 39 (Summer 2001): 105-116.
-- “Bait.” The Southeast Review 21.1 (Spring 2001): 64-80.
-- “Crow Season.” Chattahoochee Review 21.2 (Winter 2001): 93-98.
-- “Dirt.” The Chariton Review 26.2 (Fall 2000): 21-25.
-- “Jolo.” Mid-American Review 21.1 (Fall 2000): 6-22.
-- “Revival.” Virginia Quarterly Review 76.4 (Autumn 2000): 713-720.
-- “Cash Crop: 1897." The Massachusetts Review 40.1 (Spring 1999): 11-25.
-- “Tall Grass." Shenandoah 47.4 (Winter 1997): 30-32.
-- “Sang." Chattahoochee Review 16.2 (Spring 1996): 51-67.
-- “Ghostless." Virginia Quarterly Review 71.2 (Spring 1995): 270-79.
-- “Sister." Best of Wind. Ed. Steven R. Cope and Charlie G. Hughes. Lexington,
Kentucky: Wind Publications, 1994: 186-93.
-- “Wappatomaka." Antietam Review 14 (Spring 1994): 11-12.
-- “In the Territory." Chaminade Literary Review 12-13 (1993): 140-46.
-- “Sister." Wind 22.70 (1992): 54-61.
-- “Bearing Witness." Hawaii-Pacific Review 4 (Spring 1989): 31-40.
-- “Getting Wood." Antietam Review 9 (Spring 1989): 17-18.
-- “The Stillness in Stillness." Poetic Space 4.6 (Spring 1989): 5-6.

Creative Nonfiction
-- “Capital Realism.” Short Takes: Brief Encounters With Contemporary Nonfiction. Ed. Judith Kitchen. W. W. Norton, 2005. 219-226.
-- “Tough.” New Millennium Writings. No. 14 (2004-2005): 133-144.
-- “Tough.” Five Points 7.3 (Summer 2003).
-- “Keeping Clean in Korat." An Inn Near Kyoto. Ed. C.W. Truesdale and Kathleen Coskran, Minneapolis, Minnesota: New Rivers Press, 1998. 270-283.
-- “Keeping Clean in Korat." International Quarterly 2.4 (Winter 1997): 43-56.

Poem
-- “Found Dogs.” Forthcoming in Shenandoah.

Scholarly Articles
-- “‘Similar Outcroppings From the Same Strata’: The Synonymous Development Imagery of Appalachian Natives and Natural Resources.” The Journal of Appalachian Studies 6.1 & 2 (Spring/Fall 2000): 100-108.
-- “’The Wheel’s Worst Illusion’: The Spatial Politics of Operation Wandering Soul.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 18.3 (Fall 1998): 72-83.
-- “Story Time: Working-Class Women's Interventions in Literary Temporal Conventions." Narrative 6.3 (October 1998): 292-306.
-- “Taken By Storm: The Exploitation of Metaphor in the Persian Gulf Crisis."
Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 8.4 (1993): 281-295.

Journalism
-- “Reading How You’re Read: The Art of Evaluating Criticism.” Poets and Writers, May/June 2007.
-- “Virtual Hillbilly: Musings on JT LeRoy by a Flesh and Blood West Virginian.” Appalachian Heritage, Summer 2006: 35-45.
-- “Citizen Dustbusters Win One in Southern West Virginia.” Appalachian Voice, Spring 2003. 12-13.
-- “Kentucky High Schoolers Blast Mountaintop Removal.” Appalachian Voice, Summer, 2003. 9.

Pictures

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Here are some images of what happens when coal is extracted by blowing the tops off the mountains. The coal companies claim they can restore the mountains but that is simply not true. They can only throw wild grass on top, grass that is not native to West Virginia, which grows in scraggly patches here and there. The mountain is dead forever.

Photo: Vivian Stockman/SouthWings. See more about mountaintop removal at the Grist website (www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/02/16/reece/).