Kelly McMasters is an assistant professor of English at Hofstra and director of the Publishing Studies Program. A resident of Port Washington, McMasters has co-edited an anthology of essays titled This Is the Place: Women Writing about Home with Margot Kahn. The book, published by Seal Press/Hachette Book Group, was named one of “6 Books You Need to Read in November” by Town & Country magazine for November 2017 and received a rave review in the New York Times. In December, McMasters presented a reading and discussion at the Dolphin bookshop.
In This Is the Place, 30 women writers explore the theme of home in personal essays. They write about neighbors, marriage, kids, sentimental objects, homelessness, domestic violence, solitude, immigration, gentrification, geography and more. They ask, what makes a home? What do equality, safety and politics have to do with it? And why is it so important to us to feel like we belong?
On Thursday, Feb. 22, at 6:30 p.m., McMasters and some contributors to This is The Place will present a free discussion and reading at Hofstra University at our Guthart Cultural Center Theater, located on the first floor of the Axinn Library. There will be a book signing afterward.
Professor McMasters is also the author of Welcome to Shirley, listed as one of Oprah’s top five summer memoirs and the basis for the documentary film The Atomic States of America, a 2012 Sundance selection. McMasters’ essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, The Paris Review, The American Scholar, River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction, Newsday, and Time Out New York, among others.
