I am pleased to report that the Jesse Stuart Foundation has added "Shiloh And Other Stories" by Bobbie Ann Mason to the shelves of our Kentucky and Appalachian Bookstore. In the last two decades, Mason has achieved national recognition as a writer who comments on Kentucky life from 1970 to the present day.

Mason was born in 1940 and grew up on her father’s dairy farm outside of Mayfield, Kentucky. As a child she loved to read, so her parents always made sure she had books. These books were mostly popular fiction about the Bobbsey Twins and the Nancy Drew mysteries. She later wrote a book about these books that she loved to read as an adolescent.

Bobbie Ann majored in journalism at the University of Kentucky. After graduating in 1962, she took several jobs in New York City with various movie magazines, writing articles about various stars who were in the spotlight. She wrote about Annette Funicello, Troy Donahue, Fabian, and other teen stars. Then she went to graduate school at the University of Connecticut, where she subsequently received her Ph.D. in literature.

By her late thirties, Bobbie Ann started to write short stories. In 1980 "The New Yorker" published her first story. "It took me a long time to discover my material," she says. "It wasn’t a matter of developing writing skills, it was a matter of knowing how to see things. I’d been writing for a long time, but was never able to see what there was to write about. It took me a long time to look back at home and realize that that’s where the center of my thought was."

Mason writes about the working-class people of Kentucky, and her short stories have contributed to a renaissance of regional fiction in America creating a literary style that critics have labeled "shopping mall realism."

Mason then went on to write a collection of short stories entitled "Shiloh and Other Stories." She won the 1982 Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for this work. In 1985 she wrote her first novel, "In-Country," which explores a high school girl’s quest for knowledge about her father, who died in Vietnam just before she was born. In 1989, the novel was adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Bruce Willis.

Mason’s other books include the novels "Spence + Lila," (1988) and "Feather Crowns," (1993); the memoir "Clear Springs," (1999) a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and a biography of Elvis Presley (2003). She is currently the University of Kentucky’s Writer-in-Residence.

February is Black History Month and to recognize the contributions of African-Americans, the JSF has developed a special section in our Bookstore on the black experience in America from the colonial period to present.

Tuesday evening, 5:45-7:00. Regional Readers meet to discuss Jim Wayne Miller’s novel, "His First, Best Country."

Thursday, starting at 11am, we will be hosting a meeting of school librarians from Lawrence County, Ohio.