{"id":705375,"date":"2026-06-15T11:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T11:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/705375\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T11:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T11:55:09","slug":"susannah-felts-new-novel-the-come-apart-is-a-love-letter-to-chicagos-indie-music-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/705375\/","title":{"rendered":"Susannah Felts\u2019 new novel \u2018The Come Apart\u2019 is a love letter to Chicago\u2019s indie music scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

In another life, Susannah Felts might have found her path as an indie rocker in Chicago\u2019s turn-of-the century pack of musicians, playing Free Mondays at Empty Bottle, recording with Steve Albini and getting signed to Touch and Go or Bloodshot Records.<\/p>\n

In real life, though, Felts found her calling as a writer. In the early and mid-2000s, she worked up a familiar byline in the Chicago Reader, married another writer (Chicago\u2019s \u201cThe2ndHand\u201d zine maker Todd Dills) and eventually moved back to Nashville.<\/p>\n

But Felts never forgot the fertile time she spent as an observer and admirer of Chicago\u2019s music scene and made it the epicenter of her new novel, \u201cThe Come Apart,\u201d out June 15 on Northwestern University Press. It follows the story of Maggie Corbin and her up-and-coming band Spinning Birds from 2008-2010 as they struggle to get a sophomore record going during the Great Recession. At the same time, complex inner-band dynamics, a freak bike accident and unexpected family drama end up setting the quartet and Maggie on a different path.<\/p>\n

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Susannah Felts\u2019 new novel \u201cThe Come Apart\u201d follows the story of Maggie Corbin and her up-and-coming band Spinning Birds from 2008-2010 as they struggle to get a sophomore record going during the Great Recession. <\/p>\n

Felts pays incredible attention to detail in the book, including coming up with Maggie\u2019s catchy lyrics and mock interviews with a music journalist, as well as a faithful replication of the era. From waxing about Pitchfork Music Fest to late nights at Danny\u2019s Tavern in Bucktown and Rainbo Club and Maggie\u2019s day job at Holfax Caf\u00e9 (inspired by former West Town spot Bite Caf\u00e9), the 250-page book reads like a love letter to the scene that she watched from the outside for years. It\u2019s even more impressive considering the fact that, in all the time she wrote for the Reader, it never once was about music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have spent quite a bit of time over the course of writing this book being like, \u2018What is this all about? Should you have done something different with your life?\u2019\u201d Felts jokes. \u201cHaving been a music fan for my entire life, though, music is deeply important to me. And I think it\u2019s a good place to write from. To find a world or community or setting that you know well in some ways, but you\u2019re also kind of on the edge of it so you can have a curiosity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Felts, who\u2019s a native of Nashville just like her main character, moved to Chicago in 1998 for grad studies at the School the Art Institute of Chicago. She settled into Logan Square and, over the course of the next decade, filled her free time with copious shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always at the Empty Bottle. One of the best was Interpol, and [I] visited Lounge Ax a few times before they closed. I saw Cat Power play there with the Dirty Three. I saw Ryan Adams at Schubas. Neko Case at Double Door. Low at the Metro. Andrew Bird at the Hideout. Oh and Radiohead at Millennium Park was another great one,\u201d she said, recalling some of her favorites. Felts put together aSpotify playlist<\/a> or soundtrack to the book that includes many of these acts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Come Apart\u201d also follows an unpublished essay she wrote years ago about how Bloodshot Records changed her worldview when she lived in town. \u201cBeing from Nashville, I had grown up hating country music and everything to do with the new Nashville sound, but as soon as I got to Chicago and heard everything going on with Bloodshot Records, I was like, \u2018oh, I like this. This is really good,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Felts has been working on \u201cThe Come Apart\u201d for more than a decade, finding mentorship in Chicago-based writers and teachers Megan Stielstra of Columbia College and Rebecca Makkai, who is also the artistic director of Story Studio Chicago. The book follows her 2008 debut \u201cThis Will Go Down On Your Permanent Record\u201d (naturally inspired by a Violent Femmes lyric) that was released on another Chicago imprint, Featherproof Books.<\/p>\n

While that title was more YA-geared, Felts says, \u201cI honestly think it\u2019s been read more by like 20-somethings over the years than by teenagers.\u201d And she hopes \u201cThe Come Apart\u201d finds the same crowd \u2014 a young artist crowd who can find inspiration in Maggie Corbin\u2019s story and the will to keep going.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find it weirdly encouraging that nothing is going to keep artists from continuing to make art even when it\u2019s harder than ever and I hope the book resonates in that regard,\u201d she says. In fact, over the long course of writing \u201cThe Come Apart,\u201d Felts watched her daughter grow up, pick up a guitar and start songwriting, in many ways fulfilling her parallel life dream, one that she also gets to live out in Maggie Corbin. \u201cThe artistic journey Maggie is on, the place she\u2019s at in her life, those feel very real to me and reflect my own experience with writing,\u201d Felts said. \u201cAnd I hope those are universal themes for other people trying to make a life in art and believing it\u2019s possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In another life, Susannah Felts might have found her path as an indie rocker in Chicago\u2019s turn-of-the century…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-705375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}