Description
This reader collects outstanding examples of Mason's award-winning work from throughout her writing career and provides a unique look at the development of one of the country's finest writers. Patchwork contains short stories first published in the New Yorker and other leading periodicals; chapters from Mason's acclaimed novels, including In Country, An Atomic Romance, and The Girl in the Blue Beret; and riveting excerpts from Mason's eclectic nonfiction. Some examples of Mason's recent explorations in flash fiction appear here in print for the first time.
Mason's writing glows with a nuanced understanding of the struggles and pathos of American life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. George Saunders writes in his introduction, "Bobbie Ann Mason is a strange and beautiful writer.... Her stories exist to gently touch on, and praise, even mourn, what it feels like to be alive in this moment." Patchwork conveys Mason's extraordinary talent and range as a writer.
About the Author
Bobbie Ann Mason is a novelist and short-story writer. She has received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and she has won many awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award; the Arts and Letters Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Southern Book Critics Circle Award; and the Kentucky Book Award. Her memoir was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Born in Mayfield, Kentucky, she now resides in central Kentucky, with her husband, cats and dogs, and writing desk. She was writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky from 2001-2011.
Reviews
Bobbie Ann Mason is one of those rare writers who, by concentrating their attention on a few square miles of native turf, are able to open up new and surprisingly wide worlds for the delighted reader."" - New York Review of Books, reviewing Shiloh and Other Stories
""Synopsis cannot begin to do justice to the complexity, drama, and ultimate benevolence of Mason's vision."" - Chicago Tribune, reviewing Feather Crowns
Book Information
ISBN 9780813175454
Author Bobbie Ann Mason
Format Hardback
Page Count 512
Imprint The University Press of Kentucky
Publisher The University Press of Kentucky