Songs of No Provenance

When Joan Vole, an indie folksinger forever teetering on the edge of fame, sexually assaults a fan onstage, she fears it will doom her career. She abandons her beloved Martin parlour guitar and flees New York, seeking refuge at a writing camp for teenagers in rural Virginia where phones are forbidden.With the threat of an internet storm looming over her, Joan is forced to examine her toxic relationship to artmaking and the sexual kink she has been hiding for decades, while finding new hope in her students and a deepening intimacy with a nonbinary cartoonist called Sparrow.Suffused with flashbacks that evoke a musical underworld as seductive as it is seedy, we are immersed in Joan's relationships. From her complicated friendship with Paige, the teenage runaway she mentored whose success has outstripped hers, to the secret ex-boyfriend who inspired Joan's biggest hit, which cemented her status as a queer icon after she implied it was about a woman.Lydi Conklin boldly explores queer appropriation, fame hunger, cancel culture, trans nonbinary identity and how to make art without ego, all the while asking how Joan might forge a new future for herself.A propulsive character study of a flawed and fascinating artist, Songs of no Provenance is a visceral, gutsy and profound debut novel about love, self-acceptance and clawing oneself to safety.