Kelly McMasters joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the elusiveness of “home”, creating space for our children in our art, questions as writing tools, letting go of what we thought our lives would be, falling in love with narcissists, the critical distance necessary to our work, writing about exes, landscape as a foil, and her memoir in essays The Leaving Season.

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Also in this episode:

-stealing with intention

-curiosity and self-reflection in memoir

-approaching an essay

Books mentioned in this episode:

Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris

The Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray

Soil:The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille Dungy

Omega Farm by Martha Mcphee

The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order by Joan Wickersham

History of Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky

Kelly McMasters is an essayist, professor, mother, and former bookshop owner. She is the author of the Zibby Book Club pick The Leaving Season: A Memoir-in-Essays (WW Norton, 2023) and co-editor of the ABA national bestseller Wanting: Women Writing About Desire (Catapult, 2023). Her first book, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, was listed as one of Oprah's top 5 summer memoirs and is the basis for the documentary film ‘The Atomic States of America,’ a 2012 Sundance selection, and the anthology she co-edited with Margot Kahn, This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home (Seal Press, 2017), was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post Magazine, The Paris Review, The American Scholar, River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction, Tin House, Newsday, and Time Out New York, among others. She holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia's School of the Arts and is the recipient of a Pushcart nomination and an Orion Book Award nomination. Kelly has spoken about creative nonfiction at TEDx, authors@google, and more, and has taught at mediabistro.com, Franklin & Marshall College, and in the undergraduate writing program and Journalism Graduate School at Columbia University, among others. She is currently an Associate Professor of English and Director of Publishing Studies at Hofstra University in NY. 

Connect with Kelly:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelly_mc_masters

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kelly.mcmasters.3/

Website: www.kellymcmasters.com

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About Ronit

Subscribe to Ronit's Memoir Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank?utm_source=profile-page

Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers