Woman Walk the Line

How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives

Edited by Holly Gleason

SERIES: American Music Series

University of Texas Press

Full-tilt, hardcore, down-home, and groundbreaking, the women of country music speak volumes with every song. From Maybelle Carter to Dolly Parton, k.d. lang to Taylor Swift—these artists provided pivot points, truths, and doses of courage for women writers at every stage of their lives. Whether it’s Rosanne Cash eulogizing June Carter Cash or a seventeen-year-old Taylor Swift considering the golden glimmer of another precocious superstar, Brenda Lee, it’s the humanity beneath the music that resonates.

Here are deeply personal essays from award-winning writers on femme fatales, feminists, groundbreakers, and truth tellers. Acclaimed historian Holly George Warren captures the spark of the rockabilly sensation Wanda Jackson; Entertainment Weekly’s Madison Vain considers Loretta Lynn’s girl-power anthem “The Pill”; and rocker Grace Potter embraces Linda Ronstadt’s unabashed visual and musical influence. Patty Griffin acts like a balm on a post-9/11 survivor on the run; Emmylou Harris offers a gateway through paralyzing grief; and Lucinda Williams proves that greatness is where you find it.

Part history, part confessional, and part celebration of country, Americana, and bluegrass and the women who make them, Woman Walk the Line is a very personal collection of essays from some of America’s most intriguing women writers. It speaks to the ways in which artists mark our lives at different ages and in various states of grace and imperfection—and ultimately how music transforms not just the person making it, but also the listener.

Not only will readers find some of the finest music writing in the business here, but they’ll also learn how the musicians’ evolution influenced each essayist’s own creative process. The result? Incredibly empowering writing about what it means to be an artist and a human being. . . .Woman Walk the Line will touch readers to their cores — reminding them of their first musical loves and the difference between a musician and a star. Nashville Scene

Each of the 27 essays focuses on the experience of when music was a savior, an inspiration or an acknowledgment of a deep and personal truth. New York Times

A rhapsodic, moving look at music's transformative power. People

...truly stunning... PASTE

...a new collection of personal essays on the transformative impact of women in country music aims to change the narrative. The Washington Post

Best Music Books of the Fall Publisher's Weekly

30 Must Read Music Books This Fall—The deeply personal pieces often feel like the authors are cracking open a secret chest, sharing treasured glimpses into their true selves. Salon.com

Much has happened to shape the national discourse in the 18 months since Holly Gleason began working on Woman Walk The Line...Much has happened in the last 18 days to make it essential reading. Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

The essays in Woman Walk the Line are multidimensional, living, breathing cases for the importance of each of these female country artists, including aurally and visually. As an edited anthology of multiple authors, this book is surprisingly cohesive. Pop Matters

Holly Gleason is a music critic, academic, and artist development consultant. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, HITS, Musician, CREEM, the Oxford American, No Depression, and Paste.