Author Ann Pancake will speak at Samford Feb. 22 at the first event in the 2016 BACHE Visiting Writers Series.

Pancake, whose novel Strange as the Weather has Been offers a compelling fictional account of a coal mining community in Appalachia, will read from her work at a free public event February 22 at 7 p.m. in the Howard Room of Samford’s University Center. Her reading will be followed by a book signing and reception.  

Strange as the Weather Has Been won the 2007 Weatherford Prize for best fiction/poetry about Appalachia and was on the Kirkus Review’s list of Top Ten Books of 2007.

Pancake also has published two short story collections, Me and My Daddy Listen To Bob Marley (2015) and Given Ground (2001). She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writers’ Fellowship Grant, a Pushcart Prize and numerous writing fellowships. She currently teaches at Pacific Lutheran University.

BACHE is the Birmingham Area Consortium for Higher Education, a partnership among the five four-year colleges and universities in the greater Birmingham area: Birmingham-Southern College, Miles College, Samford University, University of Montevallo and University of Alabama at Birmingham.