Mason West

It's like swimming up a waterfall, but I've been from the bottom to the top and back down again.
Mason West was born (26 November 1955) and raised in Austin, Texas, but has since lived in many parts of the U.S. and in many countries around the world. He attended the University of Texas at Austin in two incarnations separated by a long computer programming career. Graduating summa cum mora (with greatest delay), he finally finished his Bachelor of Arts in English in 1998, twenty-five years to the day after he started it.

He also has a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Texas State University, but he insists that travel informs his writing as much as education. After finishing the masters in 2002, he taught English in Medellín, Colombia; Daejeon, South Korea; Kodaikanal, India; and Santiago de Chile.

West has published numerous stories, articles in magazines and newspapers, and reviews of films, books, and art. In January 1999, West's short story, "Alice by Day" was selected as a featured story of Zoetrope All-Story Extra, the Web supplement to Francis Ford Coppola's literary quarterly. Later that year The American Institute of Graphic Artists, Houston chapter, selected "Alice" for a program that matched writing with posters that toured in a program to promote literacy across the state. His story "Secrets of My Prison-House" won an honorable mention in the Austin Chronicle short story contest in 1998.

West is a credibly published poet and recently released a collection of poems dating from 1978 to 2011 as an ebook on Amazon.com. The collection is called Counting Stars at Forty Below.