Ani DiFranco

A Grammy-award winning artist, Ani DiFranco put out her first album in 1990, at age twenty and on her own Righteous Babe Records label, choosing thirteen songs from her original catalog of one hundred. Since then, she has gone on to make more than twenty albums with over 5.5 million album sales. She continues to be a major touring and recording artist, running and expanding her own label, and a celebrated feminist leader whose songs work as a lens for the women’s movement. DiFranco’s memoir will be an honest examination of an eventful and radical life, from leaving her home and being emancipated at the age of fifteen, her years of struggle in New York, the honing of her musical and songwriting chops, and the artistic and material success that has both thrilled and confounded her. She will reflect on her life from a place of hard-won wisdom and maturity, and combine personal expression, music, feminism, political activism, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and much more into one inspiring story. A “self-made phenomenon” (New York Times) and autodidact, DiFranco has defined the concept of DIY and been a voice of her generation. Her success has sustained a vigorous social activist career. She continues to work tirelessly for reproductive rights, racial justice, ecological sanity, gender equality and prison reform, and is on the board of The Roots of Music, which provides music education in New Orleans, where she currently resides with her family. Through this work she has touched many thousands, and inspired even more through her music, which fearlessly addresses difficult issues and forges communities in her listeners. Ani DiFranco says, “Writing songs is not really about discipline. There’s work, yes, but also to really get it right the clouds must part and a shaft of light come down, in a living moment things must align. Writing prose has already presented itself differently to me. It feels like sitting in front of a huge slab of timeless stone and staring unfocused until a figure appears, and then chipping… and chipping, and then again un-focusing the eyes. A much more zen exercise in its ritual and manual labor. I am very excited about exploring this new kind of writing and making a book. And I’m very excited to work with the awesome Viking crew!” In 2016, DiFranco released “Play God,” a single and video championing reproductive rights. The track will be featured on her upcoming album BINARY, out in May 2017.