mason
... At the age of 48, Mason herself is short, slender and, in a lively, wholesome way, attractive - an older version of the prototypical high school cheerleader of almost every teen-agers dreams. ... Since the publication of her acclaimed collection Shiloh and Other Stories, in 1982, Mason has been in the forefront of the 80s renaissance in regional fiction. ... In Shiloh, which won the PEN/ Ernest Hemingway Award for first fiction; in her 1985 novel In Country, in the short novel Spence + Lila, due out next month, and in the stories she has done recently for The New Yorker and other magazines, Mason has recorded the changes that the 1970s and 80s have wrought on working-class people in her part of the world. ... For a long time, Mason says: Since Huckleberry Finn, or thereabouts, it seemed that all American literature was about the alienated hero. ... Mason likes to call herself a country girl - the words come up often in conversation. ... MASON IS SEATED on a sofa in the large living room of her house, and her husband, Roger Rawlings, a writer and editor, is stoking the fireplace before leaving on an errand. ... Beside her are two of her cats - Alice and Bilbo, 13-year-old sister and brother, devoted to each other, Mason says. ... I dont have anybody to talk to, except Roger, Mason says. ... Mason has come to rural Pennsylvania by a circuitous route, just as she has come to her success as a writer after a long, painful struggle. ... And Mason, lounging on the couch with her cats, agrees. ... Mason often uses simple, bare-bones sentences. ... Mason isnt happy with any of those labels or comparisons. ... Bobbie Ann Mason was raised on a 54-acre dairy farm near Mayfield, Ky. ... After high school, Mason attended the University of Kentucky, where she took journalism classes and reported for the school newspaper, The Kentucky Kernel. ... ) After college, Mason moved to New York for a while, where she worked on a movie magazine in the early 60s. ... ) It wasnt until the mid-70s, in Pennsylvania, that Mason really began writing - though, she says, she feels she never really decided to write fiction.