Ann Pancake’s first novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been (2007), was one of Kirkus Review’s Top Ten Fiction Books of 2007, won the 2007 Weatherford Prize, and was a finalist for the 2008 Orion Book Award and the 2008 Washington State Book Award. Her collection of short stories, Given Ground (2001), won the 2000 Bakeless Prize, and she has also received a Whiting Award, a NEA fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize. Her fiction and essays have appeared in such journals and anthologies as Orion, The Georgia Review, Poets & Writers, and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best. She teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.