Drop the record needle on any vinyl album in your collection, then read the first pages of that novel you’ve been meaning to pick up-the reverberations between them will be impossible to miss. Since Dylan went electric, listening to rock ‘n’ roll is frequently a surprisingly literary experience, while contemporary literature is curiously attuned to the history and beat of popular music. In The Ink in the Grooves, Florence Dore brings together a remarkable array of acclaimed novelists, musicians, and music writers to explore the provocative and mutually creative relationship between musical and literary inspiration, the vitality that writers draw from a three-minute blast of guitars, and the poetic insights that musicians find in Shakespeare and science fiction. Together, the essays and interviews in The Ink in the Grooves provide a backstage pass to the creative processes behind some of the most exciting and influential albums and novels of our time.

Contributors: Michael Chabon, Bob Dylan, Laura Cantrell, Roddy Doyle, Steve Earle, William Ferris, Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, Dave Grohl, Peter Guralnick, Amy Helm, Randall Kenan, Jonathan Lethem, Greil Marcus, Rick Moody, Lorrie Moore, The John Prine Band (Dave Jacques, Fats Kaplin, Pat McLaughlin, Jason Wilbur), Dana Spiotta, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Richard Thompson, Daniel Wallace, Colson Whitehead, Lucinda Williams, Warren Zanes – Cornell University Press