Hofstra professor to discuss book about home in Port

The Island Now
Kelly McMasters

Home is a loaded word, a complex idea: it’s a place that can be comforting, difficult, nourishing, war-torn, or political.

The subject provides a rich source of material in a new anthology, “This is the Place: Women Writing About Home” edited by Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters, assistant professor of English at Hofstra University.

In this thought-provoking collection, 30 women writers explore the theme in personal essays about neighbors, marriage, kids, sentimental objects, homelessness, domestic violence, solitude, immigration, gentrification, geography, and more.

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?

In their Introduction, the editors describe the many facets of home, namely as the place where we were made and where we are most ourselves.

The book’s contributors, including Amanda Petrusich, Naomi Jackson, Jane Wong, and Jennifer Finney Moylan, lend a diverse range of voices to this subject that remains at the core of our national conversations.

Named one of the “6 Books You Need to Read in November” by Town and Country magazine, a review in the New York Times said the book “could not be timelier” given today’s economic uncertainties, calling the essays “far-reaching” and “compelling.”

McMasters, who teaches nonfiction writing in the MFA in Creative Writing Program and is the Director of the Publishing Studies Program at Hofstra, is also the author of 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 will appear with fellow Port Washington author Beth Ain at Dolphin Bookshop on Thursday, Dec. 7 at 6:30 p.m.  Together they will discuss “This is the Place,” a book that will make you laugh, cry, and think hard about home, wherever you may find it.

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