Daniel Mason

Daniel Mason is an American novelist and physician, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and a fellow in the Program in the History of Science and Medicine. His fiction explores the intersections of medicine, history, and consciousness. The Piano Tuner (2002), his debut novel set in British Burma in the 1880s, was an international bestseller translated into twenty-eight languages. A Far Country (2007) followed. The Winter Soldier (2018) is set in World War One and follows a medical student turned field physician; it won the Northern California Book Award for Fiction. His short story collection A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth (2020) won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize in 2020 and the California Book Award for Fiction. North Woods (2023) was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and won several other prizes. Mason's fiction is notable for its historical range, its intimate attention to the human body, and its lush narrative style. Mason received his BA and MD from Harvard University. He has been recognized with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize shortlist and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family.