Ann Pancake, a graduate of the West Virginia University Department of English and author ofStrange As This Weather Has Been,will give a free public reading at 7:30 p.m. Monday (Nov. 5) in the Robinson Reading Room of the Wise Library on the Downtown Campus.

The event is hosted by the WVU Creative Writing Program, Department of English and Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. The reading will be followed by a reception and book signing. It is free and open to the public.

Strange As This Weather Has Been,published this October by Shoemaker&Hoard, focuses on mountaintop removal mining in southern West Virginia.

The Romney native won the 2000 Bakeless Award for her collection of short stories,Given Ground,published in 2001.

She has received other awards for her works, including a Whiting Award, National Endowment for the Arts grant, Pushcart Prize, Glasgow Prize and creative writing fellowships from Washington, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Her fiction and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies such as Glimmer Train, Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah and New Stories from the South.

Pancake earned a doctorate in English literature from the University of Washington and currently teaches in the low-residency master of fine arts program at Pacific Lutheran University.

For more information, contact Gail Adams, associate professor of English, at 304-293-3107 ext. 33434 or Gail.Adams@mail.wvu.edu .