Kelly McMasters
In: Biography, History
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Kelly McMasters grew up in
Shirley. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Newsday, Metropolis, and Time Out NY, among others. She teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism and the undergrad creative writing program of Columbia University, and for mediabistro.com. She is the co-director of the KGB Nonfiction Reading Series in the East Village and splits her time between Manhattan and northeast Pennsylvania with her husband, the painter Mark Milroy. Please visit www.kellymcmasters.com for more information.
About the book:
McMasters' early years were peripatetic, making the family's decision to settle down in scrappy blue collar Shirley, Long Island, momentous. Here, on the edge of a wildlife preserve, they secured their first home and for the first time became part of a community. But all was not well in the early 1980s in this shoddily constructed small town, or at nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory. Journalist McMasters writes with precision, affection, and venom about the history of her hometown, chronicling the misdeeds of its speculator founder, William Turnbull Shirley; lovingly portraying neighbors; and indicting Brookhaven, a flawed nuclear facility and 'one of the nation's most hazardous waste offenders,' for allowing tritium and other radioactive substances to fatally contaminate the area's groundwater and soil. So high were the cancer rates in Shirley, a street was dubbed Death Row, and cancer survivors launched a fierce battle against the federal government. Joining the growing circle of environmental health memoirists, McMasters marshals the facts and articulates feelings with eloquence and drama, telling stories of personal suffering to expose crimes against the public, and nature itself.
--Donna Seaman, Booklist
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