Bobbie Ann Mason
Bobbie Ann Mason | |
---|---|
Born | Mayfield, Kentucky, U.S. | May 1, 1940
Citizenship | USA |
Education | University of Kentucky (BA) Binghamton University (MA) University of Connecticut (PhD) |
Notable works | Nabokov's Garden: A Guide to Ada (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1974)
The Girl Sleuth: A Feminist Guide to the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and Their Sisters (Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1975) Shiloh and Other Stories (New York: Harper & Row, 1982; London: Chatto & Windus, 1982) In Country (New York: Harper & Row, 1985; London: Chatto & Windus, 1986) Clear Springs: A Memoir, Random House (New York, NY), 1999 The Girl in the Blue Beret, Random House (New York, NY), 2011 |
Notable awards | PEN/Hemingway Award, 1983
National Endowment for the Arts award, 1983 Guggenheim Fellowship, 1984 |
Bobbie Ann Mason (born May 1, 1940) is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and literary critic from Kentucky. Her memoir was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.[1]
Early life and education
A child of Wilburn and Christianna (Lee) Mason, Bobbie Ann Mason grew up on her family's dairy farm outside of Mayfield, Kentucky, with four siblings and her great niece Mya Mason. [2] As a child she loved to read with encouragement from her parents; however, choices were limited. These books were mostly popular fiction about the Bobbsey Twins and the Nancy Drew mysteries. She would later write a book about these books she read in adolescence titled The Girl Sleuth: A feminist guide to the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and Their Sisters.[3] Mason credits her time at a grade school in Cuba, Kentucky with influencing her adult fictional characters.[4]
After high school, Mason went on to major in English at the
Career
By the time she was in her late thirties, Mason started to write short stories. In 1980, The New Yorker published her first story. "It took me a long time to discover my material", she said. "It wasn't a matter of developing writing skills, it was a matter of knowing how to see things. And it took me a very long time to grow up. I'd been writing for a long time, but was never able to see what there was to write about. I always aspired to things away from home, so it took me a long time to look back at home and realize that that's where the center of my thought was." Mason has written about the working-class people of Western Kentucky, and her short stories have contributed to a renaissance of regional fiction in America creating a literary style that critics have labeled "shopping mall realism."[6]
Mason then went on to write a collection of short stories, Shiloh and Other Stories. In 1985, she published her first novel, In Country, which eventually was made into a feature film (see below). She followed In Country with another novel in 1988, Spence and Lila. She has since published several more short story collections (see below). In 2016, Mason became the second living author to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.[4]
Mason's dissertation, a critique of
Her short stories have appeared in numerous magazines, including
Selected works
- Short story collections
- Shiloh and Other Stories (1982)
- Love Life. Harper & Row, New York (1989)
- Midnight Magic (1998)
- Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail (2002)
- Nancy Culpepper (2006)
- Novels
- In Country (1985)
- Feather Crowns (1993)
- An Atomic Romance (2005)
- The Girl in the Blue Beret (2011)
- Dear Ann (2020)
- Novella
- Spence + Lila (1988)
- Memoir
- Clear Springs: A Memoir (1999) ISBN 0-679-44925-6
- Biography
- Elvis Presley (2002)
- Criticism
- Nabokov's Garden (1974)
- The Girl Sleuth: A Feminist Guide (1975)
Awards
- PEN/Hemingway Award, 1983
- National Endowment for the Arts award, 1983
- Pennsylvania Arts Council grant, 1983, 1989
- Guggenheim Fellowship, 1984
- Kentucky Governor's Award in the Arts, 2012
- Kentucky Literary Award, 2004, 2012
References
- ^ "Bobbie Ann Mason Stitches Together the Fabric of a Writer's Career in Her New UPK Book". University of Kentucky. 26 June 2018. Retrieved 26 May 2019.
- ^ a b c Deuschle, Rich. "Pennsylvania Center for the Book: Bobbie Ann Mason". pabook.libraries.psu.edu. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
- ISSN 1765-2766. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
- ^ a b Eblen, Tom (2 January 2016). "Bobbie Ann Mason named to Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame". Lexington Herald-Leader. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
- ^ Alger, Derek. "'Bobbie Ann Mason' interviewed by Derek Alger". Pif Magazine. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
- ^ Conarroe, Joel (15 September 1985), "Winning Her Father's War", New York Times, retrieved 18 March 2016
- OCLC 1031214595.
Further reading
- Price, Johanna, Understanding Bobbie Ann Mason, University of South Carolina Press, 2000
- "Understanding" review by Barbara Marshall
External links
- Author's website
- "Facing Toward Home" 1999 interview
- 1995 answers by Mason to Kentucky high school students
- A&S Hall of Fame 2015 interview, UK College of Arts & Sciences, Kentucky