EDNOTE. This caught my eye because Mason was the first to publish a book about ADA---NABOKOV'S GARDEN: A GUIDE TO ADA (Ardis, 1974).  She had sent her dissertation to Carl Proffer (co-founder of Ardis which republished VN Russian works) and he sent it to VN for comment. Mason went on to become a well-known writer--mostly about lower class folk of the border states, especially Kentucky. What has always bemused me is how Mason who had saturated herself in ADA became the sort of  writer she is.
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Novelist to be given Corrington Award at Centenary College
Shreveport Times, LA - Nov 1, 2005
... of four novels, four collections of short stories, a literary memoir, a brief biography of Elvis Presley, a scholarly guide to Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Ada ...
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051101/LIVING/511010301/1004
 
Novelist to be given Corrington Award at Centenary College
November 1, 2005
From Staff Reports

Bobbie Ann Mason, whose most recent novel, "An Atomic Romance," was published by Random House in August, will be presented the 15th annual John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence on Wednesday at Centenary College in Shreveport.

The ceremony, which will include a reading by the author, will take place at 7 p.m. in the Smith Building's Kilpatrick Auditorium.

Mason is the author of four novels, four collections of short stories, a literary memoir, a brief biography of Elvis Presley, a scholarly guide to Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Ada," based on her doctoral dissertation and a feminist study of such heroines of adolescent literature as Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins.

She made her mark on contemporary fiction with "Shiloh" and "Other Stories" (1982), which received the PEN/Hemingway Award in 1983. As a novelist, she is best known for "In Country" (1985), a coming-of-age narrative about a 17-year-old girl whose father was killed in Vietnam before she was born. The 1989 film version of "In Country" was directed by Norman Jewison and starred Bruce Willis as the girl's uncle, himself an ailing Vietnam War veteran with whom she travels from their home in rural Kentucky to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

A native of rural Kentucky, Mason was educated at the University of Kentucky, the State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of Connecticut, where she earned a doctorate in English. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and two Southern Book Awards.

The award she will be presented is named after the Centenary alumnus and author of the short novel "Decoration Day." It is in the form of a bronze medal designed by internationally acclaimed Louisiana sculptor Clyde Connell.

Previous recipients include: Eudora Welty, Ernest J. Gaines, James Dickey, Miller Williams, Lee Smith, Paul Auster, Elizabeth Spencer, Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, Eleanor Wilner, Richard Powers, C.K. Williams, Eavan Boland, Michael Longley and last year's co-recipients, Debora Greger and William Logan.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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