Amy Mason Doan Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author

Amy Mason Doan

Amy Mason Doan

Amy Mason Doan Biography

Amy Mason Doan grew up in Danville, California and now lives in Portland, Oregon. She has an M.A. in Journalism from Stanford University and a B.A. in English from U.C. Berkeley.

Amy has written for The Oregonian, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, Forbes, and other publications.

Amy Mason Doan's website

This bio was last updated on 04/12/2021. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Interview

Amy Mason Doan discusses the story behind her novel Lady Sunshine

It started with Wilco's song "California Stars."

San Francisco, 1998. I was twenty-five, and the plaintive tune had become my "earworm"—an ugly word for beautiful music. I played it on my red iPod Shuffle in the dingy studio apartment I shared with another girl and her boyfriend, and when I jogged along the foggy Marina. I listened to it when standing on packed buses to and from my dispiriting job as an advertising analyst, and when I couldn't sleep, which was often. I was lonely after a breakup, and the lyrics, about longing to rest one's "heavy head" on a bed of stars, became my lullaby.

A month after I first heard the song, I learned the story behind it from a radio show, and that became as much of an obsession as the song itself. The lyrics were part of a treasure trove of unrecorded Woody Guthrie lines that his daughter, Nora, had brought to Billy Bragg and Wilco so they could set them to music—which became the album Mermaid Avenue.

The gutsy intimacy of this project fascinated me. How brave it was to take a dead genius's words and meld them with your own music. How did Nora Guthrie feel about Bragg and Wilco's interpretations? What secrets of her father's might the lyrics hold? These questions became the seeds of ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Amy Mason Doan at BookBrowse
Lady Sunshine jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
Broken Country (Reese's Book Club)
by Clare Leslie Hall
A love triangle reveals deadly secrets in this thriller for fans of The Paper Palace and Where the Crawdads Sing.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Original
    by Nell Stevens

    In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor.

  • Book Jacket

    Angelica
    by Molly Beer

    A women-centric view of revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church, Alexander Hamilton's influential sister-in-law.

  • Book Jacket

    The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant
    by Liza Tully

    A great detective's young assistant yearns for glory, but first they have learn to get along in this delightful feel good mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    The Whyte Python World Tour
    by Travis Kennedy

    Rikki Thunder, drummer for '80s metal band Whyte Python, is on the verge of fame, love—and a spy mission he didn’t expect.

Win This Book
Win These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas

"[An] atmospheric tale of unexpected hope." —Lisa Wingate, New York Times bestselling author

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

E H L the B

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.