Non-Fiction: Margot Kahn + Kelly McMasters

Margot Kahn (Horses That Buck: The Story of Champion Bronc Rider Bill Smith) and Kelly McMasters (Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town) read from their work.

MARGOT KAHN received her B.A. from Bates College and her M.F.A. from Columbia University. Her work and book reviews have appeared in various print and online publications including Work Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Ohioana Quarterly, and Publishers Weekly. In 2005 she received the Ohioana Library Association’s Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant for a promising young writer. Horses That Buck: The Story of Champion Bronc Rider Bill Smith is her first book, and you can find more information at www.margotkahn.com.

"In Margot Kahn's carefully rendered and lovingly told biography of Bill Smith, we find the story of how a talented and determined man forges himself into a champion, both inside the arena and out. Horses That Buck is about family and freedom and, ultimately, how they braid themselves together in the human heart."
--Mark Spragg, author of Where Rivers Change Direction

"The most beautifully written rodeo or human story I have ever read."
-Larry Mahan, six-time World Champion All-Around cowboy

KELLY MCMASTERS grew up in Shirley, Long Island, a place that is also the focus of her book, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Newsday, Elle Décor, Metropolis, and Time Out New York, among others. She teaches writing at mediabistro.com and in the undergraduate writing program and Journalism Graduate School at Columbia University. She is also the co-director of the KGB Nonfiction Reading Series in the East Village. You can find more information at www.kellymcmasters.com.

“All places are mute till someone speaks for them--this book bears marvelous, scalding witness to the kind of horror that's been repeated 
in so many spots that we've almost gone numb. But no one will be 
numb after reading this account.”

—Bill McKibben, author The Bill McKibben Reader

“The heartbreak of this story is in the small details, which leave a
lingering sense of lives that might be forgotten if they were not
 recalled here. Both personal and political, and steadily compelling,
 Welcome to Shirley is a thoughtful, delicate elegy to an ideal.”

—Lydia Millet, author of Oh Pure and Radiant Heart and How the Dead
 Dream

“McMasters tells the story…with passion and clarity. She also pulls off a small miracle in the telling, making rundown, unbeautiful Shirley a place of dignity, a place of heroic people and stubborn fighters, a place you’d be proud to call home.”
—Elaina Richardson, O Magazine

The KGB Nonfiction Reading Series is the city's premier outlet for the most talented contemporary nonfiction writers working today. Books are provided by Mobile Libris.