Where Do We Go From Here?

The dream of the 90s is alive at Lilith Fair. Also: book sales & upcoming events!

Have you watched the Lilith Fair documentary? I know; it dropped on Hulu the same week we were cancelling Disney/Hulu en masse. But, bunny? It is the feel-good positivity injection you need RIGHT NOW. You should see it, by any means necessary.

Produced by Canadians (of course) Dan Levy and Christina Piovesan along with many others – including music critic Jessica Hopper, who cowrote the Vanity Fair oral history of the festival that launched this whole project, and who I used to edit at the Chicago Reader -- Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery tells the long-ago tale of the late-90s traveling festival created by Sarah McLaughlan to showcase a murderer’s row of female musicians. It was ambitious, exuberantly feminist, radical, and queer, at a time not so very long ago when programmers refused to play two women back to back on the radio, let alone put them onstage together, for fear men and their money would spontaneously combust.

Over the course of three years, seemingly every woman making music in the English-speaking world rode the Lilith bus for a time: Bonnie Raitt, Missy Elliott, Natalie Merchant, Erykah Badu, Jewel, Tracy Chapman, Queen Latifah, Suzanne Vega, PATTI SMITH, Emmylou Harris, the Indigo Girls, and, of course, Sinéad O’Connor, who after so many years of misogynist mistreatment by the American music industry and its sycophants in the press, found the tour to be “a major boost to my confidence and self-esteem.” As she says in the film, “In the very male world [of the media and music] you can often feel unheard as a female artist. But I actually realized, I have been heard. It’s a very healing experience.”

Check out this clip from a 1998 VH1 interview with Sinéad.

I did not go to Lilith Fair when it happened. I was a fan of many of the artists but I was still very dug into the underground, and just not into big festivals? But I *sobbed* when I watched the film. And I sobbed again just now watching the trailer for the 95th time.

So much vision, so much potential, so much adorable 90s hair. The fair was dismissed by established men and cooler-than-thou indie rockers, then on the cusp of the era of Vice and indie sleaze. It was also boycotted by the likes of Jerry Falwell, for being named after “a demon” and for giving Planned Parenthood a platform. A 1998 performance in Atlanta received a bomb threat. But it helped launch the careers of younger artists, like Christina Aguilera and Nelly Furtado, and hired and trained up so many women in backstage production roles, many of whom still work in the industry today. At the end of every performance all the women came out on stage to sing together. Watching the film I wanted to stow away on their bus forever, in this now-improbable space of solidarity and support, something we took for granted as our birthright.

As much as the documentary is a nostalgia trip for my generation, its most wrenching scenes are those featuring young artists like Olivia Rodrigo, just children at the time, marveling at how the promise of the moment has been squandered; how twenty-five years later ,young female musicians are still being cut into pop-starlet cookies to be spat out when they grow stale.

Or as this young artist says of the film, on TikTok: “I really thought I had made peace with and worked through a lot of internalized misogyny but I realized I still have a lot of room to grow. … I’m watching this now at 29 years old thinking “holy shit, this could be my life … and it’s not. We don’t have this now in 2025. And it’s heartbreaking.”

@mickeylooniLilith fair doc got me fucked up

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Speaking of Sinéad, Nothing Compares to You: What Sinead O’Connor Means to Us, has been out for three months now, so the other day I logged onto the Simon & Schuster author portal to see how it was doing in terms of sales. We’d had such good press, both at home and abroad. A social media pro told me I was doing everything right. We had packed houses at events. Enthusiastic feedback. Word of mouth. Surely, I thought, the book was finding its audience.

Reader: it is not. There, on the screen, was a number I found comical in its lowness. I’m well aware that essay collections are a hard sell, and I never expected to land on the NYT bestseller list. But Sinéad is a beloved and iconic figure with a worldwide following. How could this be?

I’ve parsed the dashboard, reminded myself that this doesn’t include sales in Ireland, where we were on the cover of the Sunday Times magazine ffs. But also, like many authors this year, I’ve been grappling with the cold truth of the market: “Earned media” (publishing-speak for reviews and off the book page coverage, like author interviews) is harder to secure these days than an affordable apartment in Seattle and, more importantly, even if you DO get good press, as we did, it doesn’t move units. Substack publishing discourse has been consumed by the cruel logic of this of late. If you’re interested, you could read Kathleen Schmidt’s take here. (Related, I also recommend this behind-the-curtain explanation of how bookstores decide what to stock, by

Fisher the Bookseller

, the frontlist buyer for a Midwest indie bookstore, here.)

I don’t know how to fix the system. I don’t know where the disconnect between media and sales lies. I don’t know what was happening in-house at One Signal with marketing. I can say that I had a wonderful time working on the book, meeting so many sublimely talented writers and allies along the way. My time in Ireland promoting it was, no lie, life altering, and I would not trade that for a million book sales. I do know that come fall I hit a wall in terms of my own ability to promote the book and also do my day job. And then a family emergency derailed everything. But watching the Lilith Fair doc gives me hope.

Film is a different medium but I don’t think I’m delusional to believe that every GenXer nostalgic for the lost promise of this feminist moment, and every GenZ-er wondering what the fuck happened to their future, could find themselves in our book. If you are that person, or you know someone who is, I urge you to take a chance on a $28.99 hardcover that will reward you for years to come. As Caryn Rose said of it, in Salon:

If this anthology feels like something meant for you, you will read it in chunks, you will go back for re-reads of certain passages, you will read a paragraph and need to put the book down and stare out the window for a few minutes, trying to find some sky or a tree or a bird to clear your mind. You will underline sentences and circle entire paragraphs. You will feel like you have walked into a room where friends and other people who might be very different from you are united in your admiration for an artist who was full of talent, fire, drive and pain. It is specific and personal, but it is also overarching and universal in how it pays tribute to Sinéad O’Connor’s life, work, and ultimate impact.

While I was in Seattle I stopped in at Elliott Bay Book Company to see if they had the book. By sheer happenstance, the staffer I asked to point me toward it was the same staffer who had reviewed the book for the store’s in-house newsletter, calling it “a major, must-read body of work.” I think I scared him when I hugged him. Thank you Shawn! You are a champion. Back in the 80s, even before Lilith Fair, I worked in Elliott Bay’s basement café, back in its old space in Pioneer Square. To come home, full circle, to this was one of the moments that makes this whole ridiculous endeavor worth it. If you buy the book direct from Elliott Bay you might even get one of the copies they had me sign.

Can you tell I haven’t showered today? Or slept much.

Anyway, I am finally back at my other home in Waukegan, after three weeks on the West Coast, and ready to gear up for a new round of book promotion for the fourth quarter, aka “holiday season,” aka the two-month period between Halloween and New Year’s when 75% of all books are sold.

I am also thrilled to announce a few upcoming book events in Chicago:

On November 20 I will be in conversation with my friend Rob Miller, whose hilarious and acid-tinged memoir of his life in music as co-owner of Chicago’s legendary Bloodshot Records I acquired and edited. The book is as wry and brisk as its title, The Hours Are Long, But the Pay Is Low, and I am so excited to be at long last bringing it into the world. Booklist called it “rollicking!” We will talk about the Chicago we came up in in the 90s and 00s, regale you with stories of dive bars and diners gone by, and ponder seriously whether we are the only two people left standing worried about “selling out,” and whether that is serving us well. That’s at 6 pm at the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square. RSVP here!

And on November 22 I will be at the Irish Books and Music Festival at Chicago’s Irish American Heritage Center, to talk all things Sinéad with moderator Alison Cuddy and Nothing Compares contributor (and good friend) Zoe Zolbrod. This festival sounds so fun, and I’ve never been before. And there will be beer (I assume). Come out! Saturday at 3:30 pm at the IAHC, 4226 N. Knox.

More to come soon.