UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Critically acclaimed writer Kelly McMasters will be visiting Penn State February 24-27 as this year’s Fisher Family Writer-in-Residence and will give a free public reading during her visit at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 27, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium at University Park.
The Fisher Family Writer-in-Residence program brings a well-known poet, fiction writer, or nonfiction writer to campus each year to share their expertise and work with students in undergraduate creative writing classes and the graduate Creative Writing Program. It is funded primarily through the generosity of Steven Fisher, a 1970 Penn State graduate in English, with additional support from the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment, University Libraries, the Department of English, and the College of the Liberal Arts.
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” (2023, WW Norton) and co-editor of the American Booksellers Association’s national bestseller “Wanting: Women Writing About Desire” (2023, Catapult). Her first book, “Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town” (2008, Public Affairs), was listed as one of Oprah's top five summer memoirs and was the basis for the documentary “The Atomic States of America,” a 2012 Sundance selection. 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. Additionally, her essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Paris Review Daily, The American Scholar, Literary Hub, Newsday, River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction, Romper, and The Rumpus, among others.
McMasters received her baccalaureate degree from Vassar College and her master of fine arts in nonfiction writing from Columbia's School of the Arts. A former Pushcart and Orion Book Award nominee, she has spoken about creative nonfiction at TEDx, authors@google, and elsewhere. She has also taught at mediabistro.com, Franklin & Marshall College, and Columbia University and is currently associate professor of English and director of publishing studies at Hofstra University.