Pancake, Ann 1963–

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Pancake, Ann 1963–

PERSONAL:

Born February 19, 1963, in Romney, WV; daughter of Joe S. (a minister and social worker) and Robin (a high school art teacher) Pancake. Ethnicity: "White." Education: West Virginia University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1985; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, M.A., 1992; University of Washington, Seattle, Ph.D., 1998.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Seattle, WA.

CAREER:

Writer and educator. California Language Institute, Kurume, Japan, teacher of English as a second language, 1986-87; American Samoa Community College, Pago Pago, American Samoa, instructor in English, 1988-90; Vongchavalitkul College, Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, instructor in English as a second language, 1992-93; Pennsylvania State University Erie, Behrend College, assistant professor of creative writing and literature, beginning 1998, director of Smith Reading Series, 1999-2000; Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA, teacher in low-residency master of fine arts (M.F.A.) program.

Participates in workshops and fiction readings.

MEMBER:

Appalachian Studies Association, Working Class Studies Association, Associated Writing Programs.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Ruth Rose Richardson fellow, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1991; grant, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), 1996; University of Washington, Seattle, John Webber Prize, 1997, for teaching, and Susannah J. McMurphy fellow, 1997; first place award, Emerging Southern Women Writers Contest, 1998; Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, 1998; Tennessee Williams scholar in fiction, Sewanee Writers' Conference, 2000; Bakeless Literary Publication Prize, fiction category, 2000, for Given Ground; fellow, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, 2001; Katherine Nason Bakeless fellow, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 2001; Whiting Writers' Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, 2003; Glasgow Prize; Pushcart Prize.

WRITINGS:

Given Ground (short stories), University Press of New England (Hanover, NH), 2001.

Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel, Shoemaker & Hoard (Emeryville, CA), 2007.

Work represented in anthologies, including Best of Wind, edited by Steven R. Cope and Charlie G. Hughes, Wind Publications, 1994; An Inn Near Kyoto, edited by C.W. Truesdale and Kathleen Coskran, New Rivers Press, 1998; and Lessons on the Road, edited by Diana Renn.

Contributor of articles and short stories to periodicals, including Glimmer Train, Southeast Review, Chattahoochee Review, Chariton Review, Mid-American Review, International Quarterly, Journal of Appalachian Studies, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Metaphor and Symbolic Activity.

Also author of Ann Pancake Web log.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ann Pancake's first book, a short-story collection titled Given Ground, received the 2000 Bakeless Literary Publication Prize in the fiction category. The book focuses on characters from the author's home state of West Virginia, such as an unattractive adolescent with a boyfriend who is disfigured. Other stories depict stoic characters who meet a harsh and rough life with few complaints. In a review of Given Ground for the New York Times Book Review, Elizabeth Judd wrote: "She has an unusual gift for portraying difficult lives with a plain-spoken accuracy that makes them seem … exceptional."

In her first novel, Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel, the author maintains her West Virginia setting with protagonist Lace Ricker, who decides to do battle with the owners of a coal-mining company that is ruining the land and water around her family home via its strip-mining activities. Joined in the fight by her daughter, Bant, Lace must still deal with her husband and sons who work as miners for the company, ultimately risking their lives to support the family. Carol Haggas, writing in Booklist, called Strange as This Weather Has Been "a dramatic portrait of how teens and young children cope with family crises." Referring to the book as a "fine, ambitious first novel," New York Times Book Review contributor Jack Pendarvis wrote: "Pancake's aim is … high. Her horrors are biblical, her compassion towering."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 2007, Carol Haggas, review of Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel, p. 57.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2007, review of Strange as This Weather Has Been.

New York Times Book Review, August 12, 2001, Elizabeth Judd, review of Given Ground, p. 22; October 14, 2007, Jack Pendarvis, "Buried Alive," review of Strange as This Weather Has Been, p. 26.

Orion, January-February, 2008, Janisse Ray, review of Strange as This Weather Has Been.

Publishers Weekly, August 27, 2007, review of Strange as This Weather Has Been, p. 61.