Lynn Melnick | Fully Booked Podcast

On this week’s episode, Lynn Melnick joins us to discuss ‘I’ve Had To Think Up a Way To Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton’ (Texas Univ. Press, Oct. 4), an impactful essay collection that braids a profound poet’s memoir and a biography of Dolly Parton, with a dazzling strand of cultural criticism down the center.

“The first time I remember hearing a Dolly Parton song start to finish was in the triage room of a hospital, as I waited to be admitted to a drug rehabilitation program in West Los Angeles,” Melnick writes in the opening essay, “Seven Bridges Road” (each essay is named for a Parton song). Over the next two decades, Parton became a constant in Melnick’s life—an idol, an inspiration, a touchstone. In 2019, on the tail end of a year filled with heartbreak and strife, Melnick took a trip to Dollywood with her family to commune in the place where Parton came from.

That trip was a catalyst for ‘I’ve Had To Think Up a Way To Survive,’ a shimmering collection styled as a Parton playlist, in which Melnick considers the difficulties and delights of coming up as a woman and an artist in a culture that doesn’t readily make safe creative space for women and artists.

Melnick and host Megan Labrise discuss the origin of the title of the book; how Melnick became a Dolly Parton fan; which Parton songs she listens to when she’s feeling happy or sad; the experience of having an actor perform one of Melnick’s poems, and how it henceforth changed how she read it; creative partnerships and community; choosing to write about joy; Melnick’s opinion on Annie Ernaux’s Nobel Prize win; and much more.

You can listen to new episodes of Fully Booked every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or at kirkusreviews.com/podcast.