Bobbie Ann Mason

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.

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. 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. Mason credits her time at a grade school in Cuba, Kentucky with influencing her adult fictional characters. She earned her master's degree at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1966. Next she went to graduate school at the University of Connecticut, where she subsequently received her Ph.D. in literature with a dissertation on Vladimir Nabokov's Ada in 1972. Her dissertation was published as Nabokov's Garden two years later while Mason taught at Mansfield State College (now Mansfield University).

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.

Mason's dissertation, a critique of Vladimir Nabokov's Ada or Ardor, was published in 1974. A year later, she published The Girl Sleuth, a feminist assessment of Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, and other fictional girl detectives. Mason's first volume of short stories, Shiloh and Other Stories, appeared in 1982 and won the 1983 Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for outstanding first works of fiction. Mason's novel In Country is often cited as one of the seminal literary works of the 1980s. Its protagonist attempts to come to terms with a number of important generational issues, ranging from the Vietnam War to consumer culture. A film version was produced in 1989, starring Emily Lloyd as the protagonist and Bruce Willis as her uncle.

Her short stories have appeared in numerous magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Mother Jones, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. Mason has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was a writer in residence at the University of Kentucky until 2011. Her short story "Wish" appears in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. Patchwork: A Bobbie Ann Mason Reader was published in 2018.

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)

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