Reading Country: Music and Prose: Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions

THIS IS A FREE PROGRAM.

Speaker: Dr. Francesca T. Royster, Author and Professor of English and Critical Ethnic Studies, DePaul University

Emcee and Host: David Menconi, Award-Winning Journalist and Author, 2019 North Carolina Piedmont Laureate

Join us for a special edition of our author talk series Reading Country: Music and Prose as we welcome Dr. Francesca Royster, author of Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions. Royster will speak about her new book, which explores how Black musicians have changed the country music landscape and brought light to Black creativity and innovation. Royster’s book can be purchased in the Museum Shop and signed by the author at the event’s conclusion. This program is part of the museum’s new exhibition The Power of Women in Country Music, on view through February 26, 2023. David Menconi will serve as the emcee and host of the program.

Dr. Francesca T. Royster is a professor of English at DePaul University, author of Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era and Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon, and coeditor of “Uncharted Country,” a special issue of the Journal of Popular Music Studies on race and country music.

2019 North Carolina Piedmont Laureate David Menconi is an award-winning journalist and author in Raleigh. He spent 34 years writing for daily newspapers, with 28 of those years at the Raleigh News & Observer. He also has written for The Bluegrass Situation, Spin, Billboard, Rolling Stone, No Depression, the New York Times, and salon.com and has authored several

books. He is editing a new series of music books that will launch in 2023 on University of North Carolina Press with his next book, Doing the Work: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music.

**The Power of Women in Country Music exhibition will be FREE on this day.**