Can one be a "fully-realized human being" outside New York? Many people have intense, complex and ambivalent feelings about the city and the mindset that is New York. The essays and poems that make up Leaving New York look at writers' attitudes over the years toward the city's physical place and emotional and spiritual pull. Some leave, never to return, but carry New York in their hearts. Many talk of leaving but never make the move, while others come and go.

All have deep responses to the experience of the city. This is a rich and varied collection of reflections on the role of place in our lives. There are original essays by Leslie Brody, Frank Conroy, Bill McKibben, Kathleen Norris and Mona Simpson, with a separate introduction by Kathleen Norris. There are previously published pieces by twenty-seven authors from Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald to Joan Didion and Toni Morrison.