By Mack McCormick and Whitney Hale
Bobbie Ann Mason. Photo by Guy Mendes.
Life is a quilt — random bits of memory that somehow fit together, forming a cohesive yet unlikely pattern. One of the best ways to uncover these seemingly hidden patterns, as demonstrated by Kentucky writer and University of Kentucky alumna Bobbie Ann Mason, is through fiction.
“Writing fiction is a way of making patterns, discovering them hiding in the words and sensations of the story,” said Mason, who has been publishing fiction since her first story, “Shiloh,” in 1980. Mason’s stories explore a diverse set of themes ranging from war to love to family history, all the while trying to discover patterns in the random bits of