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Bobbie Ann Mason

Bobbie Ann Mason is the author of eight books of fiction and a memoir, Clear Springs (Random House, 1999), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her first collection of short fiction, Shiloh & Other Stories (Harper & Row, 1982), won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her most recent novel, The Girl in the Blue Beret (Random House, 2011), won the Kentucky Book Award.

Author

Photo by Charles Bertram

Reading Between the Lines

Spring 2014 | Essays

When I was about ten, I received a five-​year diary for Christmas. It was a small green leather-like book with a little lock and key. My grandmother, who had briefly kept a minimalist diary, insisted that I record the weather. In her diary she wr [...]

The Horsehair Ball Gown

Spring 2013 | Fiction

On Thursdays, if the weather was pleasant, Isabella Smith drove her older sister, Maud, to Lexington to have lunch at Harvey’s, the best place outside of Louisville to get a Kentucky Hot Brown. They liked the friendly old-time atmosphere, with its [...]

Underground

Everyone comments on how wonderful I'm looking, how my tan makes me look younger, how I seem to be a new person. I'm not so mousy anymore, and driving on busy highways no longer makes me fearful. My children were here earlier this summer, with their [...]