Author Talk with Francesca Royster of Black Country Music
Tuesday, June 23rd 2026 at 6:00 PM EDT
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Francesca T. Royster is Professor of English at DePaul University and received her PhD in English from University of California, Berkeley in 1995. At DePaul she teaches courses on African American Literature, Queer Writers of Color and Writing About Music. She’s written creative and scholarly work on Shakespeare, Black country music performers and fans, Prince, Beyoncé, Tracy Chapman, queer utopias and chosen family, among other topics. Her books include Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon (Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era (University of Michigan Press, 2013), Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions (University of Texas Press, 2022), and Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance (Abrams/ Overlook Press, 2023). Among her awards, Black Country Music won the 2023 Ralph Gleason Music Books First Prize from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the 2023 ARSC Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research​, the 2023 Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award, from The American Musicological Society and the 2023 Woody Guthrie Award for most Outstanding Book on Popular Music by the International Association of Popular Music Studies- US.
How Black musicians have changed the country music landscape and brought light to Black creativity and innovation.
After a century of racist whitewashing, country music is finally reckoning with its relationship to Black people. In this timely work—the first book on Black country music by a Black writer—Francesca Royster uncovers the Black performers and fans, including herself, who are exploring the pleasures and possibilities of the genre.
Informed by queer theory and Black feminist scholarship, Royster’s book elucidates the roots of the current moment found in records like Tina Turner’s first solo album, Tina Turns the Country On! She reckons with Black “bros” Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, then chases ghosts into the future with Valerie June. Indeed, it is the imagination of Royster and her artists that make this music so exciting for a genre that has long been obsessed with the past. The futures conjured by June and others can be melancholy, and are not free of racism, but by centering Black folk Royster begins to understand what her daughter hears in the banjo music of Our Native Daughters and the trap beat of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road.” A Black person claiming country music may still feel a bit like a queer person coming out, but, collectively, Black artists and fans are changing what country music looks and sounds like—and who gets to love it.
2023 Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
2024 Woody Guthrie Book Award, International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US Branch (IASPM-US)
2023 Certificate of Merit, ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research, Association for Recorded Sound Collections​
2023 The Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award, American Musicological Society
The views expressed by presenters are their own and their appearance in a program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by McMaster University.