Life Is Short, but It's Wide: In the Southern State of Reality

With "Life's" road map, you are likely to end up lost--but only temporarily. The final destination is pure, gleeful laughter!

Whether it's dinner party disasters, gardening dilemmas, or a shopping trip with friends, Ann Ipock will have you smiling with her down-home wit and vitality as she peels back the layers of her Southern-bred life in Life Is Short, But It's Wide (In the Southern State of Reality), published by Carolina Avenue Press. An entertaining book of essays highlighting the wackiness of life in the South, this book is a sure cure for taking life too seriously. No wonder that New York Times best-selling author Dorothea Benton Frank proclaims it will "tickle you to pieces," and award-winning Southern author William Baldwin deems it "easy going 'Beach Music' of the highest order.'

Ann has been compared to Erma Bombeck with her candid but whimsical outlook on life happenings, and her "nutty observations" are contagious--you'll be tempted to record some of your own. Only a mind like Ann's can make a gala out of a trip to the grocery store, so it's not surprising that her philosophy on life goes something like this: "Don't be afraid to run under the sprinkler with or without your bathing suit on."

Ann is unapologetically "as Southern as black-eyed peas and chitlins" and it spills over in her writing. She celebrates life with her husband, Russell, at their home in Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Her essays appear regularly in various regional magazines, and whe writes a biweekly humor column for the Georgetown Times. Life Is Short is Ann's second book. She frequently speaks to organizations and groups with a blend of humor and motivation which leaves the audience nodding in approval and often laughing out loud.

Life Is Short is a 167-page trade paperback with North and South Carolina as backdrops. Ann Ipock's family, friends, and folks who influenced her growing-up years intertwine as characters in her episodes of life. But it is Ann's ability to find humor in the mundane, the whale among a sea of minnows, that makes this book a keeper.

Born in New Bern, North Carolina, but raised in Jacksonville, North Carolina, Ann Ipock began selling shoes at age fourteen along side her two sisters, one brother, Granny Pinky, and her dad at the family's shoe store, The Bootery. Ann later graduated from Coastal Carolina Community College and began a career as a dental hygienist in a small coastal N.C. town. This career abruptly ended when the the Mayor's mustache became tangled up in her tooth polisher. She then explored other careers: secretary, collections officer, home health manager, medical transcriptionist, even real estate sales. She moved to Myrtle Beach in 1986 and began yet another career selling commercial telephone systems. When she was laid off in 1991, she began serious writing and joined a writer's group. Ann is now beginning her sixth year writing her current humor column for the Georgetown Times (S.C.'s oldest newspaper). In addition, she writes for Sasee, Pee Dee Magazine, Strand, and Gateway. She is married to Russell Ipock and currently lives in Pawleys Island. Ann is involved in community theatre and cites her portrayal of Truvy Jones in "Steel Magnolias" as her favorite role to date. She is busy writing a romantic-comedy novel in between book tours.