Thursday, May 19, 2022
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT
Join us for Amy Rigby’s talk about writing music memoirs. She’ll discuss other music memoirs – recent ones and also titles from back when she first discovered the genre – which she finds exciting and inspiring. She’ll talk about using what she’s learned from her experiences as a reader and also from years of songwriting to write her own memoir, Girl To City. She’ll share some of the stumbles she made along the way to getting her book out into the world; the complications of writing about family and friends, and the joy of finding readers who relate to what feels like a very personal story. She hopes looking at memoir writing through the lens of music can help writers in the group who are interested in memoir, and also highlight a growing literary genre.
Amy Rigby sets the small details and truths of everyday life to vivid words and music*.* A teenage denizen of CBGB who fell in love with country songwriting, Rigby started bands Last Roundup and the Shams in NYC’s East Village before causing a sensation with her debut solo album Diary Of A Mod Housewife. Amy has continued to write and record new music for the past three decades. Her songs have been covered by Ronnie Spector, Laura Cantrell, John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants and…Kevin Costner. She has shared writing online since before the invention of the blog and has contributed essays to the Village Voice, Talkhouse and Slate. Her first book, Girl To City: A Memoir was published in 2019. She spent the pandemic creating a podcast version of Girl To City as well as Looking For The Magic, a music podcast with writer Elizabeth Nelson. Amy was interviewed by Terry Gross for NPR’s Fresh Air in early 2020. She lives and records in Catskill, New York with her husband and sometime duo partner Wreckless Eric, and tours regularly in the US and UK.
“Singer-songwriter…doesn’t fully describe Rigby’s immense gifts and her devotion to the kind of pop and rock music that singer-songwriters often neglect.” —Nashville Scene
“…one of the country’s best songwriters, with a mordant wit and keen eye for emotional detail.” —Chicago Reader
amyrigby.com
diaryofamyrigby.wordpress.com
https://theamyrigby.bandcamp.com
https://twitter.com/AmyRigby
https://www.instagram.com/amymrigby/
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/28/800071527/i-was-singing-for-my-life-amy-rigby-on-mixing-music-and-motherhood
