About Kelly

Kelly McMasters is a professor, nationally bestselling author, and former bookshop owner living in New York. Along with *The Leaving Season*, she is the author of *Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir of an Atomic Town*, an Orion Book Award finalist and one of Oprah’s Top 5 Summer Memoirs, and co-editor of *Wanting: Women Writing About Desire* and *This is the Place: Women Writing about Home*. She teaches at Hofstra University.
Photo by Sylvie Rosokoff

out now from w.W.Norton

"The Leaving Season is an astoundingly gorgeous memoir of life and love and leaving. With devastating insight, Kelly McMasters paints a delicate portrait …of aching beauty and stubborn hope. Written with lush prose and an expansive heart, both gentle and gut-wrenching, beautiful and profound, The Leaving Season is a work of wonder."
—Lyz Lenz, bestselling author of THIS AMERICAN EX WIFE

“This is a book of mourning and its opposite—a hallelujah.”
—Emily Raboteau, author of LESSONS FOR SURVIVAL: Mothering Against “the Apocalypse”

“In her gorgeously written memoir, Kelly McMasters navigates through—and ultimately out of—the very real yet unmappable space that a marriage occupies. Her story is one of a kind and yet pieces feel familiar: the gradual estrangement, the power imbalances, the anguish around the decision to stay or go, and the surprising discovery that, as a single mother, ‘the load felt lighter, the house brighter.’ This book, written by a complete stranger, made me feel a sense of community. What a profound gift.”
—Maggie Smith, bestselling author of YOU COULD MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL HERE

“Never have I encountered a memoir that explores motherhood and marriage with such warmth, intimacy, and wisdom. This is a book that will forever change the way you see your world—and yourself.”
—Joanna Rakoff, bestselling author of MY SALINGER YEAR