BOBBIE ANN MASON

Sometimes a book I'm reading is so terrific that when I finish, I simply turn back to page one and start all over again to see what I've missed, to experience it again, more deeply, or because I don't want to let it go.

In the 1980s, Vietnam emerged in our culture as a legitimate and compelling topic for discussion rather than something to be hidden in shame.

I suppose the desire to go to town helped make me ambitious, and the allure of the worlds that came in over the radio also helped. But the rewards of growing up on a farm were far greater in many ways than life in town.

The small family farm is dying; people's lives are being dislocated.

You have to realize that, when it comes to the South, we carry around a lot of baggage. The South lost the war, and I spent years denying my culture.

Some people will stay at home and be content there. Others are born to run. It's that conflict that fascinates me.

I like to play with words and the sounds of words - that's extremely important to me.

I rejected the traditional notion of 'women's work,' but I never thought of my early ambitions in a feminist way, exactly. Primarily I rebelled against apathy and limited education. I was rejecting a whole way of life that I thought trapped everyone.

I was very bookish and shy. I didn't have playmates, ever.

'In Country' is about a high school girl's quest for knowledge about her father, who died in Vietnam just before she was born.

Memory is a powerful thing for a writer.

In America, we all come from somewhere else, and we carry along some dream myth of home: a notion that something - our point of origin, our roots, the home country - is out there.

Reading can be just feeding, but smart reading takes us further. The classroom is one way to go deeper, but we can't stay in school forever.

I lived on the farm with my parents and grandparents. I had no playmates as a young child, and I was indulged. I helped my grandmother piece quilts, and we made pretty albums, an old-fashioned pastime. We cut poems and pictures out of magazines.

Because we lived only a mile outside the town of Mayfield, I was acutely conscious of being country. I felt inferior to people in town because we had to grow our food and make our clothes.

In the early Seventies, I started writing a little autobiographical novel about my childhood - I made it into a mystery story.

I was too shy to do anything but read, but there was nobody to tell me what to read.

I often say flippantly that the short story is... shorter; you can be done with it more easily. It's much less of a commitment of time and energy than a big project like a novel or long nonfiction book.

The farm is one field to the east of the railroad track that used to connect New Orleans with Chicago. The track runs beside Highway 45, an old U.S. route that unites Chicago with Mobile, Alabama.

Writing a novel about World War II and the French Resistance was a challenge both sobering and thrilling.

'In Country' was also made into a film, which opened the story up to a broader audience.

During the Cold War, workers proudly contributed to national defense, but the carelessness and haste in handling toxic waste created a nightmare of pollution for subsequent generations.

Most of the time I was in the Northeast, I lived in the country, and I think that helped me to discover my material for writing.

It was important for me to understand who I am and where I came from. To get a hold on why I do certain things.

I wanted to be somebody, go somewhere, do something with my life.