For release: October 10, 2011
For press information, contact Gabrielle Maxey, 901/678-2843

Bobbie Ann Mason

Mason’s first short stories were published in The New Yorker and were included in her first book of fiction, Shiloh & Other Stories. The collection won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was nominated for the American Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a grant from the  National Endowment for the Arts and an Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Mason’s first novel, In Country, was made into a film starring Bruce Willis and Emily Lloyd. Feather Crowns and Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail both won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. Her memoir Clear Springs was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Mason’s latest novel, The Girl in the Blue Beret, was published this summer.

The River City Writers Series is sponsored by the Writing Program, the Creative Writing Club, the Department of English, the Hohenberg Foundation and Student Event Allocation, with support from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the Moss Chair of Excellence.

RCWS is one of the longest running reading series in the nation, serving the U of M and the Mid-South community for 35 years.

For more information, email creativewriting@memphis.edu, or holladay@memphis.edu,

or call 901-678-4692.