Kelly McMasters

Biography

Kelly McMasters is the author of The Leaving Season: A Memoir in Essays (Norton, 2023) and Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir From an Atomic Town (PublicAffairs, 2008). Her essays have appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Paris Review Daily, the American Scholar, LitHub, River Teeth, the Rumpus, and more. She teaches creative writing at Hofstra University in New York and runs The Magpie newsletter on Substack.

Kelly McMasters
Sylvie Rosokoff

See Work

ESSAYS / Winter 2024

Splitting the Family Story

By Kelly McMasters ,  Illustration by Melinda Josie

The plastic sandwich baggie in my ex-husband’s hand was scalloped in fog; all I could see of what was inside was a folded paper towel and some dirt. The Long Island summer heat wafted up from the gravel in waves. Even though we were shaded...

McMasters