Acclaimed Book’s Editor Holly Gleason to be Joined by Wanda Jackson at
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this Saturday, July 21
Country Music Hall of Fame with Brenda Lee + More Saturday, August 4
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Having just received the 2018 Belmont Book Award, honoring the best in country and roots music, Woman Walk The Line: How The Women of Country Music Changed Our Lives takes it to the Hall of Fame. As one of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2018 Author’s Series Selections, it anchors a Women in Country Music Day on Saturday, July 21 with Wanda Jackson; on August 4, it serves as the focal point for a final panel in conjunction with the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Loretta Lynn: Blue Kentucky Girl exhibition.
“With everything that’s happened with this book,” enthuses editor/contributor Holly Gleason, “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the Belmont Book Award – or so many people’s interest in the way these 27 female country stars literally changed my contributor’s lives in often palpable ways. To be part of these kinds of discussions is everything Woman Walk The Line is about.”
At a time when women’s voices are being raised, Woman Walk The Line: How The Women of Country Music Changed Our Lives has taken the conversation to SiriusXM’s Debatable, Emmy-nominated “Pickler & Ben,” “Imus in the Morning,” Garden & Gun’s “Whole Hog” podcast, as well as Rolling Stone, Oxford American, Mojo, Minneapolis Public Radio’s Rock & Roll Book Club and named one of No Depression’s Top 10 Books of 2017.
“At a time when #MeToo and #TimesUp matters, this book – and the response to it – shows the power and impact of women’s art, especially the music made by country women. Whether they get on the radio or not, what they do matters – and these essays show that women not only listen to women, but they take the strength, courage, inspiration and liberation in its many forms to heart.”
On Saturday, July 21, the Rock Hall kicks off a day of celebrating women in country music with a 3 p.m. panel featuring an interview with Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member Wanda Jackson. Moderated by Gleason the panel will feature several of the book’s contributors including Jackson, garage country purveyor Aubrie Sellers (Alison Krauss), former CREEM editor Deborah Sprague (Rosanne Cash) and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Director of Artist Relations Shelby Morrison (Barbara Mandrell) reading and discussing a woman’s place in country music. The day of celebration will conclude appropriately with music, culminating in a performance by the legendary rockabilly queen herself.
On August 4, Brenda Lee (the subject of an essay by 17-year old Taylor Swift) and Jeannie Seely meet Gleason and country music’s next wave of female artists Aubrie Sellers and Ashley Monroe to discuss Lynn’s impact, as well as the power of women’s voices in contemporary life across country music. Book signings will follow each event.
Fixin To Write also put the anthology PASTE called “truly stunning” on their 2017 Books We Loved list with Roxanne Gay’s Hunger, Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Misfit’s Manifesto, Marie Howe’s Magdalene, Stasha Steensen’sHouse of Deer, Ariel Levy’s The Rules Do Not Apply, Jennifer Weiner’s Hungry Heart and Sarah Vowell’s Lafayette in the Somewhat United States.
Noted memoirist Pamela Des Barres, known for I’m With The Band and Lets Spend The Night Together, enthused, “Awesomely important book.”
“To be able to bring together a panel where an icon like Wanda Jackson meets legendary rock editor Deb Sprague and the Rock Hall’s Shelby Morrison joins groundbreaking artist Aubrie Sellers to talk about the power of women in music and how they change lives? It’s exactly the kind of thing the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is built on: considering music, the media and how it intersects and expands our culture. This is going to be awesome.
“And with the Country Music Hall of Fame panel in August, we’re still just getting started.”
The New York Times wrote, “Each of the 27 essays focuses on the experience of when music was a savior, an inspiration or an acknowledgement of a deep and personal truth, while The New York Times Book Review opined, “These are personal essays about influence and inspiration… at their best, they shine their life on the story and the storyteller equally.” People seconded that notion with “A rhapsodic, moving look at music’s transformative power” and Oxford American offered, “an exploration of that liminal space between the artist’s intention and the listener’s reception.”
Rolling Stone proclaimed, “There’s probably no better time for Woman Walk The Line, the groundbreakers continue to strike many chords,” Santa Fe New Mexican declared, “a sisterhood — even a whisper network — in the genre that predates #MeToo by decades,” Newsday recognized the duality “about country music, about being a woman, about navigating the world” and Britain’s MOJO proffered, “The stylistic line from Maybelle Carter through Dolly Parton on up to Taylor Swift isn’t a straight on, and the intention of this absorbing anthology isn’t to pretend that it is…intimate, inspirational essays.”
About Woman Walk The Line: How The Women of Country Music Changed Our Lives:
Published as part of the University of Texas’ American Music Series, the 27 essays trace country music’s history through the lives of the women who made the music and the women whose lives were changed because of it. Featuring top James Beard Award winner Ronni Lundy on Hazel Dickens and what it meant to be a strong, free woman in the ‘70s, New York Times best-selling novelist, songwriter and leading African American intellectual Alice Randall on Lil Hardin’s unseen but impactful place, Rosanne Cash’s eulogy for June Carter Cash, “Access Hollywood” founding producer Nancy Harrison on learning women can write their own stories from Dolly Parton, food activist Ali Berlow on Emmylou Harris and impenetrable grief, Fisk poet in residence Caroline Randall Williams on Rhiannon Giddens representing a black woman’s incandescent place in roots music and historians Holly George Warren on Wanda Jackson’s irrepressibility as a groundbreaker and a mother, and Kim Ruehl on Patty Griffin’s music healing her post-9/11 PTSD among the essays, it has struck a chord among readers of all ages, races, occupations and orientations.