Susannah Felts

TCA has a cover & is available for pre-order! Keeping the week’s good energy flowin (Mamdani! Full ♉️ 🦫 Supermoon!), I’m overjoyed to reveal the beautiful and bold cover for THE COME APART, coming next June on Triquarterly Books, an imprint of @nupress . Thanks to Morgan Krehbiel for the gorgeous design. A bit of background from the story: The main character’s band is called Spinning Birds; their debut album is called Murmuration. Thus, we’re putting birds on things, with gusto. 🐦‍⬛ 💛 And right this minute you can pre-order, which, as you probably know by now, is a good good thing for books! Shop local @thebookshopnashville @parnassusbooks @novelettebooksellers , or order from @bookshop_org @barnesandnoble or the bad place. She’s out there. I’m so excited to share this book with y’all. ☺️✨

Suffice to say, I have dreamed about this moment for a long time. I hope this little work’s journey will offer both wild hope and a reality check to those of you with a book in your heart. The road can be long and bumpy, but if you love the work, keep going. Keep going. Ohhh, that’s so terribly serious. This is going to be FUN! Get in, losers, let’s gooooo!! (And @meganstielstra ’s got shotgun 4EVA. 😘) @nupress ✨✨✨

“Much of the time, I feel like a girl. A curious girl of 48 who, today, is walking the neighborhood streets with a girl of 13, and listening to what this girl has to say. She happens to be my kid, this person I made, a living being that gave my life a whole new significance. She will grow up and leave me and yet never leave me; she will be mine forever, a being I shaped.” Deeply, deeply stoked to have a new essay out in @longreads today! They tagged it “motherhood, music, rock and roll, Susannah Felts, teens” which seems as good a summary as any. It’s also a bit of a love letter to @xboygeniusx & its three amazing artists @lucydacus @phoebebridgers @julienrbaker . Lucy and Phoebe’s music has meant so much to me, and I hope I did ‘em just a tiny bit of justice here. @catpowerofficial also gets some love. Oh, that LoungeAx show w Dirty Three was something else… Thanks to my writing buddies for helping me push this one out the nest, esp @lisabubert 😘 Needless to say, I can’t wait to see boygenius at @resetconcertseries in Nash on June 25, aiiiyyyyyeee!! 🙌🤘🏻 And thx for rocking out w yr old mama, @thalsd.03 😘🤗

✨We’re comin’ up on Book Launch Szn! ✨ How kind it was of my pal @lesliebairdauthor to offer these words on TCA, and how excited I am for HER debut SALOMÉ to pub before this month ends—with a fabulous party at @the_lipstick_lounge (that means karaoke) & a convo with @jessicachace , no less! We are about to have some fun, people. And we deserve it. See you on May 26 and June 17? 🎤 🎸

I have to put this gregarious crow on main. 🐦‍⬛ 🖤

Good thing the cleaners came yesterday 😇

Brief and beautiful sojourn to the healthy land of Hilton Head with @ameliaearoundtheworld . Restored!

What cookies have to do with it. Six weeks until THE COME APART is in the world! FIELD TRIP link in bio. Some of my faves can be found at @dozenbakerynashville @theyellowtablecafe @plsthnks 🍪🔥

We’re thrilled to be partnering with our dear friend @susannahfelts to offer signed copies of her upcoming novel, THE COME APART. Out June 15, THE COME APART follows Chicago indie musician Maggie Corbin as she grapples with a decade of hustling to make her dreams come true and an unexpected move back to Nashville. Drifting in and out of songwriting sessions, cozy kitchens, and moments of bearing witness to the curious power of the natural world, this novel  celebrates the times when we must come fully undone in order to put ourselves back together. All copies ordered by June 8—for in-store pickup or U.S. shipping—will be signed by the author, so make sure to preorder yours at the link in our bio!

It is the highest of honors to have the esteemed rock critic Ann Powers @annkpowers read and comment on The Come Apart. This absolute force of a writer and intellectual has made space in rock history for woman-identifying artists like no other and tirelessly, enthusiastically champions new artists. But as generous as she is, she’d be lightning quick to add the names of other great women music writers here. That’s part of why she’s so great—she always broadens and deepens the conversation around any subject. For the rest of my life, I’ll be telling young people interested in music to stop what they’re doing and READ ANN POWERS. (Paging Thalia… 😈) Her full response to TCA is so spot on imho. (I def don’t have all the answers, lol!) It wouldn’t fit on a blurb graphic, but you can read it below. Then go read her books and sign up for her NPR newsletter!!! “The Come Apart gets the indie rock lifestyle right, from the grimy energy of a midwestern rock and roll bar to the smell of a touring van to the hungover headaches that van’s denizens face the morning after a long night in front of a sweaty crowd. What makes it great, though, is the way it traces and expands the definitions of the artist’s life beyond the club or the recording studio, to include the baker’s counter, the farmer’s greenhouse, the rich ground that forms and connects people as they tell each other the stories of their lives. Through the story of one fascinatingly imperfect artist coming into herself, this novel asks essential questions: What makes collaboration work? How does a creative block form? And most importantly, how do we all create, in every avenue of our lives, to survive and honor each other and find what joy is possible even in the darkest times? Susannah Felts doesn’t have all the answers, but she asks the questions in ways that turned my head around.”

Two more moments of joy. Wth, it’s my own damn grid.

This is self-care. And a gift. Happy midlife to me: These moments of joy in a challenging time.