Daniel Mason at a Glance

Full Name: Daniel Mason

Pronunciation: DAN-yuhl MAY-suhn

Born: 1976

Nationality: United States

Education:

• Harvard University (BA, Biology)
• UCSF School of Medicine (MD)

Genres:

• Historical fiction
• Literary fiction
• Short fiction
• Postmodern fiction

Biography & Background

Daniel Mason Biography

Daniel Mason is both a celebrated writer and a practicing psychiatrist who teaches at Stanford University. His dual passion for science and the arts began early; his father was a radiologist and his mother a painter. Mason juggled these interests throughout college and medical school; his first novel, The Piano Tuner (2002), was inspired by a year spent studying malaria in Bangkok (Krupnick, Max J. “A Dogged Observer.” Harvard Magazine, Mar-Apr. 2024). Mason has since published three more novels and a Pulitzer-nominated collection of short stories, A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, informed by the history of science and medicine. Literature has in turn influenced Mason’s medical career, with his psychiatric research centering on personal and cultural narratives of mental illness.

A California native, Mason got the idea for his most famous work, North Woods, while on a Guggenheim Fellowship in Massachusetts. Mason has an abiding interest in botany, and his writing, which is characterized by its attention to detail, often explores the relationship between humans and the natural world, as well as themes of memory and history.