{"id":101576,"date":"2020-09-09T11:31:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T16:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=101576"},"modified":"2020-09-09T12:17:27","modified_gmt":"2020-09-09T17:17:27","slug":"bobbie-ann-mason-in-conversation-with-lisa-howorth-for-dear-ann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/bobbie-ann-mason-in-conversation-with-lisa-howorth-for-dear-ann\/","title":{"rendered":"Bobbie Ann Mason in Online Conversation with Lisa Howorth for “Dear Ann” on Thursday, September 10, 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Join Square Books on Thursday, September 10 at 5 pm on Zoom as Lisa Howorth talks to Bobbie Ann Mason about her new novel, Dear Ann<\/em><\/u>. Register to attend this event by emailing rsvp@squarebooks.com<\/a>.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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From the acclaimed author of the classics Shiloh and Other Stories <\/em><\/strong>and In Country<\/em><\/strong> comes a beautifully crafted and profoundly moving novel which follows a woman as she looks back over her life and her first love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ann Workman is smart but na\u00efve, a misfit who\u2019s traveled from rural Kentucky to graduate school in the transformative years of the late 1960s. While Ann fervently seeks higher learning, she wants what all girls yearn for\u2014a boyfriend. But not any boy. She wants the \u201cReal Thing,\u201d to be in love with someone who loves her equally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Jimmy appears, as if by magic. Although he comes from a very different place, upper-middle class suburban Chicago, he is a misfit too, a rebel who rejects his upbringing and questions everything. Ann and Jimmy bond through music and literature and their own quirkiness, diving headfirst into what seems to be a perfect relationship. But with the Vietnam War looming and the country in turmoil, their future is uncertain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many years later, Ann recalls this time of innocence\u2014and her own obsession with Jimmy\u2014as she faces another life crisis. Seeking escape from her problems, she tries to imagine where she might be if she had chosen differently all those years ago. What if she had gone to Stanford University, as her mentor had urged, instead of a small school on the East Coast? Would she have been caught up in the Summer of Love and its subsequent dark turns? Or would her own good sense have saved her from disaster?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beautifully written and expertly told, Dear Ann is the wrenching story of one woman\u2019s life and the choices she has made. Bobbie Ann Mason captures at once the excitement of youth and the nostalgia of age, and how consideration of the road not taken\u2014the interplay of memory and imagination\u2014can illuminate, and perhaps overtake, our present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bobbie Ann Mason<\/strong> is the author of a number of works of fiction, including The Girl in the Blue Beret<\/em><\/strong>, In Country<\/strong><\/em>, An Atomic Romance<\/em><\/strong>, and Nancy Culpepper<\/em><\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The groundbreaking Shiloh and Other Stories<\/em><\/strong> won the PEN Hemingway Award <\/strong>and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award<\/strong>, the American Book Award<\/strong>, and the PEN Faulkner Award<\/strong>. Her memoir, Clear Springs<\/em><\/strong>, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize<\/strong>. She has won two Southern Book Awards and numerous other prizes, including the O. Henry and the Pushcart<\/strong>. Former writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky<\/strong>, she lives in Kentucky<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Join Square Books on Thursday, September 10 at 5 pm on Zoom as Lisa Howorth talks to Bobbie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":101617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2239],"tags":[602],"class_list":["post-101576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-literary-events","tag-square-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/09.08.2020-Bobbie-Ann-Mason.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}