Come Apart

Susannah Felts is a writer, editor, and cofounder of the Porch, a nonprofit literary arts center in Nashville, Tennessee. She is the author of the novel This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record, and her writing has appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, StorySouth, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She is a contributing writer for Chapter 16 and an editor with SWING, a biannual literary magazine published by the Porch.

"Quietly luminous and emotionally precise, The Come Apart builds to a hard- won sense of forward motion. Felts renders artistic life not as myth but as practice: sustained, uncertain, and essential. A moving, clear-eyed, and ultimately affirming novel about grief, persistence, and the necessary act of making something new." —Booklist, starred review"Raw and visceral. [The Come Apart] sets you not only in Maggie's world, but inside her. We are looking through a point of view of a lone woman in an indie touring band. We see glimpses into the touring process, and that of music writing and criticism." —SoundGirls"This is one of the great art novels." —Mary Miller, author of Biloxi"Susannah Felts's amazing The Come Apart finds unique new twists on one of my favorite themes—the joy and uncertainty of making art—by looking at not just the act of creation, but also the disaster that can come after. With the sharpest dialogue and a truly keen sense of humor, Felts confidently leads the reader through what might be the greatest creative act, putting yourself back together again." —Kevin Wilson, author of Run for the Hills"The Come Apart gets the indie rock lifestyle right, from the grimy energy of a midwestern rock and roll bar to the smell of a touring van to the hungover headaches that van's denizens face the morning after a long night in front of a sweaty crowd. Through the story of one fascinatingly imperfect artist coming into herself, this novel asks an essential question: how do we all create, in every avenue of our lives, to survive and honor each other and find what joy is possible even in the darkest times? Susannah Felts doesn't have all the answers, but she asks the questions in ways that turned my head around." —Ann Powers, NPR Music's critic and correspondent, and author of Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell