Strange as this Weather Has Been Events 2013-2014
The votes are in… Strange as this Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake has been selected as the 2013-2014 Common Reading.
Set in present day West Virginia, this debut novel tells the story of a coal mining family living through the latest mining boom and the destructive reality of mountaintop removal. It was selected as one of Kirkus Review’s Top Ten Fiction Books of 2007, won the 2007 Weatherford Award, and was a 2008 Orion Book Award finalist.
"A hard-living Appalachian family weathers a contemporary coal boom, with strip mining and clear cutting making their mountain homeland unrecognizable. Facing a collapsing economy and environment, [the reader] doubts neither the characters' voices nor their places in a very complex poverty." -Publishers Weekly
The New York Times Book Review calls the novel “powerful, sure-footed, and haunting.”
“Essential reading." -Library Journal
About the author: Ann Pancake grew up in Romney, West Virginia and graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia University. She obtained her M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina, and earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington. Her short stories have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, and Antietam Review; she has also published creative non-fiction and scholarly articles. Her numerous awards include the Tennessee Williams Scholarship in Fiction, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, and the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writers' Fellowship Grant, and scholarship and teaching awards. She presently lives in Seattle, WA and teaches at Pacific Lutheran University.
