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(Above and lower right: Diane Baker Mason)
On March 20, York’s Canadian Writers in Person course and reading series presented Diane Baker Mason. Mason, who graduated from York with a degree in English in 1996 
while still a student, won the Story Magazine contest for Feast, published in Gluttony: Ample Tales of Epicurian Excess (Chronicle Books, 1993).
Series organizer John Unrau of the English Department, Atkinson School of Arts & Letters, sent the following report:
Diane Baker Mason, a York graduate, gave the 11th reading in this season’s Canadian Writers in Person Series of Public Readings. The evening was of special interest to students in the English course in Atkinson’s Faculty of Liberal & Professional Studies, with which the readings are integrated, in that Mason, who began her studies 
as a mature student, decided to become a writer while taking a creative-writing course with Atkinson Professor Stanley Fefferman, School of Arts & Letters.
Mason gave a sparkling reading from several comic passages in her novels Men With Brooms and Last Summer at Barebones. Afterward, she answered questions about her busy life as a writer, interviewer on a weekly radio show, single mother of twins and law student. (She is about to graduate from York’s Osgoode Hall Law School.)
Mason is a witty and entertaining speaker, and there was a long line-up after the reading of people wanting to speak personally with her as they were having their books signed. She is now well into the writing of her next novel, to be entitled “Bad Mother”.
The Canadian Writers in Person Reading Series, which is free and open to the public, is also part of an introductory course on Canadian literature.