Paul Nicholas Mason (born 1958) is an English-born Canadian novelist, playwright, and actor. Early years Mason was born in London, England. He lived as a child in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and British Columbia before settling in southern Ontario, where he finished high school. After graduating from Trent University in Peterborough with an honors degree in English Literature, and a B.Ed. from Queen's University at Kingston, he taught English and Drama for 32 years at Lakefield College School. He published his first novel in 2005 and retired from teaching in 2015. Career as a novelist Mason's first novel, Battered Soles, was published by Turnstone Press in 2005. The novel celebrates a fictional pilgrimage from Peterborough, Ontario, to the small village of Lakefield, where there is, Mason asserts, a statue of a blue-skinned Jesus with healing powers in the basement of St. John's Anglican Church. The tone of the novel is comic but there are moments of pathos. It was nominated for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in 2005. Mason's second novel, The Red Dress, was published by Turnstone in 2008. The story of a 17-year-old young man growing up poor and confused in rural Ontario, it is darker than Battered Soles, but the ending is cautiously hopeful. The Red Dress is set in a village called Greenfield, but the landmarks and features of the community suggest that Mason has blended Lakefield, Ontario with Barriefield, just outside the city of Kingston. The Red Dress was long-listed for the 2009 ReLit award. Mason's third novel, The Night Drummer, was published by Vancouver's Now or Never Press in 2015. It is the story of two teenage friends—white middle-class Peter Ellis, and Otis James, a native boy adopted by an evangelical Christian couple old enough to be his grandparents. Peter and Otis grow up in small town Ontario in the 1970s, and the novel follows them through their high school years. "As Ellis sleeplessly anticipates his high school's looming 25-year reunion, his recollections balance moments of encroaching darkness with plenty of joyous light," says Publishers Weekly. "Ellis’s memories of first loves and jobs and an endearingly oddball assortment of friends, including Otis, a preternaturally wise and kind Ojibwe boy adopted by devout Caucasian parents, give this portrait a welcome sweetness that draws attention to the innocence, sheer possibility, and blithe lightheartedness of youth." A review in the Autumn 2017 issue of The Link reads,