Bobbie Ann Mason

Bobbie Ann Mason (born May 1, 1940, Mayfield, Kentucky, U.S.) is an American short-story writer and novelist known for her evocation of rural Kentucky life.

Mason was reared on a dairy farm and first experienced life outside rural Kentucky when she traveled throughout the Midwest as the teenage president of the fan club for a pop quartet, the Hilltoppers. She graduated from the University of Kentucky, Lexington (B.A., 1962), and moved to New York City. She attended the State University of New York at Binghamton (M.A., 1966) and the University of Connecticut, Storrs (Ph.D., 1972); her dissertation on Vladimir Nabokov was published as Nabokov’s Garden: A Guide to Ada (1974).

In 1972 Mason became an assistant professor of English at Pennsylvania’s Mansfield State College. During that time she published The Girl Sleuth: A Feminist Guide (1975), in which she explored various childhood mystery series that feature female protagonists. In 1979 she began writing full-time, eventually publishing stories in The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and elsewhere.

Mason received critical acclaim for Shiloh and Other Stories (1982), her first collection of stories, which describes the lives of working-class people in a shifting rural society now dominated by chain stores, television, and superhighways. In Country (1985; film 1989), her first novel, is also steeped in mass culture, which led one critic to speak of Mason’s “Shopping Mall Realism.” Many critics praised her realistic regional dialogue, although some compared the novel unfavourably with her shorter works. In 1988 Mason published Spence + Lila, the story of a long-married couple. Later novels included Feather Crowns (1993), An Atomic Romance (2005), The Girl in the Blue Beret (2011), and Dear Ann (2020). Among her other short-story collections were Love Life: Stories (1989), Midnight Magic (1998), and Nancy Culpepper (2006). In 2003 Mason wrote a biography about Elvis Presley. Clear Springs: A Family Story (1999) is a memoir.

Mason’s various honours included a Guggenheim fellowship (1983).