March 2, 2011
Award-winning author Bobbie Ann Mason will give a public reading and meet with students during her time at Emory.
Writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky, Mason delivers the "Feminist Founders Reading" as part of the Creative Writing Program Reading Series, Wednesday, March 16 at 6:30 p.m. in the Jones Room of Woodruff Library. This event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a booksigning with the author.
In addition to the public reading, Mason will share her writing experience with students during an open colloquium, Thursday, March 17 at 2:30 p.m. in the Callaway Center N301.
Raised on a Kentucky dairy farm, Mason began writing imitations of mystery novels as a child and was inspired by authors such as Louisa May Alcott, Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Her first collection of short stories, "Shiloh & Other Stories," won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was nominated for the American Book Award, the PEN Faulkner Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Mason is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her works, "Feather Crowns" and "Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail," won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, and her memoir, "Clear Springs," was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Co-sponsors of the Feminist Founders Reading, a Women's History Month event [pdf], include the Department of Women's Studies and the Center for Women at Emory.