David Mason

Born and raised in Bellingham, Washington, David Mason has lived all over the world. His books of poems began with The Buried Houses (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), The Country I Remember (winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award), and Arrivals. His verse novel, Ludlow, was published in 2007 (2nd ed. 2010), and named best poetry book of the year by the Contemporary Poetry Review and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. It was also featured on the PBS News Hour.

Mason’s memoir, News from the Village, appeared in 2010. Collections of his essays include The Poetry of Life and the Life of Poetry (2000), Two Minds of a Western Poet (2011), and Voices, Places (2018). Mason has also co-edited several textbooks and anthologies, including Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism, Twentieth Century American Poetry, and Twentieth Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry.

His poetry, prose and translations have appeared in such periodicals as The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry, Agenda, Modern Poetry in Translation, The New Criterion, The Yale Review, The Hudson Review, The American Scholar, The Irish Times, and The Southern Review. Anthologies include Best American Poetry and others.

He has also written the libretti for composer Lori Laitman’s opera of The Scarlet Letter, which premiered at Opera Colorado in 2016,and her oratorio, Vedem, which premiered in Seattle in 2012. Both are available on CD from Naxos. Mason won the Thatcher Hoffman Smith Creativity in Motion Prize for the development of a new libretto based upon Ludlow. His Grammy-nominated one-act opera with composer Tom Cipullo, After Life, premiered in Seattle and San Francisco in 2015 and is also available on CD from Naxos. It won the 2017 Dominick Argento Prize for Best Chamber Opera from the National Opera Association. The Parting, a new opera with Cipullo, premiered in Seattle and San Francisco in May 2019 and is also out on CD from Naxos.

A former Fulbright Fellow to Greece, Mason served as Poet Laureate of Colorado from 2010 to 2014, and taught at Colorado College. He has recently been named a corresponding member of the Hellenic Authors Society. In 2014-15 Mason published two poetry collections: Sea Salt: Poems of a Decade and Davey McGravy: Tales to Be Read Aloud to Children and Adult Children. The Sound: New and Selected Poems, and Voices, Places: Essays, appeared in 2018. Two new books will be out in 2022: Pacific Light (poems) and Incarnation and Metamorphosis: Can Literature Change Us? Mason lives in Tasmania, the island state of Australia.

-Chrissy Mason