Defiant Acts of Joy (interview with Lynn Melnick pt. 1)

We talk defiance, joy, and Dolly Parton's closet in Part 1 of our interview with poet and memoirist Lynn Melnick.  Buy Lynn's books here!

Lynn Melnick is the author of the memoir, I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton, from the University of Texas Press's American Music Series/Spiegel & Grau Audio (October 2022).  She is also the author of three poetry collections, Refusenik(2022), Landscape with Sex and Violence (2017), and If I Should Say I Have Hope (2012), all with YesYes Books. She co-edited the volume Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015). Check out her website here. 

Dolly Parton starred alongside Sylvester Stallone in the movie Rhinestone (1984), a musical based on the 1975 hit song "Rhinestone Cowboy" written by Larry Weiss. Although a critical and financial failure, the film spawned two top 10 country hits for Parton.

Read more about Lucie Brock-Broido on her website here, at the Poetry Foundation here, or read her poem "Domestic Mysticism" here.

Watch  the clip of Reese Witherspoon / Dolly Parton’s tea-and-closet moment referenced in the show (and in Lynn’s book).

Learn more (and donate to) the Sex Workers Project, a national organization advocating for the human rights of sex workers and others, at https://swp.urbanjustice.org