2019 Literary Festival Keynote

The Upcountry Literary Festival is honored to announce the keynote speaker this year will be Bobbie Ann Mason. Mason was raised on her family’s farm in western Kentucky. She earned her B.A. in English at the University of Kentucky in 1962, her M.A. at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1966, and her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut in 1972. Her first short stories were published in The New Yorker during the 1980s renaissance of short story. Mason’s first book of fiction 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 received an Arts and Letters Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is former writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky. Mason will also be awarded the William ‘Singing Billy’ Award for Lifetime Achievement in Southern Letters from USC Union.