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      Connie Converse at 100: America's Cassandra

      Connie Converse at 100: America's Cassandra

      Know before you go

      In-person event
      Location: Morse Auditorium

      Included with admission
      Advance registration recommended.

      When the music of the previously unknown Connie Converse was released in 2009, decades after she deliberately disappeared in 1974 (never to be heard from again), it created a new reference point in American music, and a need to rewrite the music history books.

      In early 1950s New York, more than ten years before Bob Dylan and his contemporaries popularized the "singer-songwriter" identity, Converse was writing and performing witty, introspective, literary songs for voice and guitar. She was also a brilliant scholar, visual artist, activist and public thinker far ahead of her time.

      Join Howard Fishman, author of To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse, in conversation with Boston Globe contributor James Sullivan and Trevor Smith, PEM’s Associate Director–Multisensory Experience and Curator of the Present Tense.

      Their conversation will cover the Converse family's long history in America, dating back to their 1630 arrival in Salem, and Converse’s relationship to the American songbook. They will also play samples from Converse’s pioneering recordings and haunting melodies. A book signing will follow the talk.

      To Anyone Who Ever Asks Book cover

      Pick up a copy of To Anyone Who Ever Asks in the PEM Shop.

      You can listen to Connie Converse’s album How Sad, How Lovely on Spotify or Bandcamp.

      About our collaborators

      Howard Fishman
      Howard Fishman

      Howard Fishman is an author, musician, composer, theatremaker and cultural essayist based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, and his writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, the Telegraph, Vanity Fair, the Boston Globe, ArtForum, the Village Voice and the San Francisco Chronicle. To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse is his first book.

      James Sullivan
      James Sullivan

      James Sullivan is a journalist and the author of five books, specializing in popular culture and Americana. He is a longtime contributor to the Boston Globe, a former staff writer and critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, and a former editor for Rolling Stone. He is also the Program Director for the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival and co-founder of Lit Crawl Boston.

      Trevor Smith
      Trevor Smith

      Trevor Smith leads PEM's Present Tense initiative, which celebrates the central role that creative expression plays in shaping our world today. Prior to joining PEM in 2008, Smith was curator in residence at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. He was previously based in Australia, where he worked for the Biennale of Sydney, served as Director of the Canberra Contemporary Art Space and was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. He was also co-curator of the 2011 Singapore Biennial. Smith has produced more than 70 exhibitions and has published widely and internationally in exhibition catalogues and journals.

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