PREVIEW: Grammy-winning Songwriter/Activist Ani DiFranco Visits UAlbany
03/24 @ Page Hall, Albany
** This article originally appeared in our March 2026 issue **
Photo by Shervin Lainez
“I'm over planning out or calculating my shows, let alone a conversation. We’ll go where the moment takes us, springing off the book and topics that come up.”
In her 2019 New York Times-bestselling memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, Grammy-winning songwriter and activist Ani DiFranco hinted at her developing spirituality,
Lauren Coyle Rosen took note and approached the legendary artist about an expansive series of interviews, leading to the collaborative book, The Spirit of Ani: Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music & Freedom, released earlier this month on Brooklyn’s Akashic imprint.
The duo comes to UAlbany’s Page Hall on Tuesday, March 24 for a free Creative Life Conversation, sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute.
“Lauren was intrigued by some of the themes in the memoir and wanted to go further,” DiFranco tells me. “It was a unique challenge for me, the first time I sat myself in a chair and stared off into space and tried to put down one complete sentence after another. It was exponentially deeper than songwriting — kind of terrifying, nauseating and panic-attack-inducing along the way.”
For The Spirit of Ani, DiFranco surrendered to a certain degree, letting Coyle Rosen take the lead with the understanding that this book was an animal of a different stripe.
“Interviews are, in my experience, as much about the interviewer as they are about me. They’re interesting in a macro way. The memoir was just me, myself, and I — I missed the guitar a lot.”
DiFranco says the event at Page Hall will indeed be about conversation, not performance. She is frank in The Spirit of Ani about her self-doubt, and expects that in further conversation with Coyle Rosen, she’ll be just as ready to discuss her motivations.
“I'm over planning out or calculating my shows, let alone a conversation. We’ll go where the moment takes us, springing off the book and topics that come up.”
In another personal first, in mid-2024, DiFranco wound down a five-month run as Persephone in Broadway’s Hadestown, a role she originated on composer Anais Mitchell’s 2010 concept album, released on DiFranco’s own Righteous Babe label.
Fiercely independent from the start, DiFranco recently released her own Unprecedented Shit — her 23rd album! — also on Righteous Babe.
Now 55 and a mother of two, DiFranco has long lived in New Orleans. The comfort she derives from her “Big Easy” garden, filled with large stones from her Buffalo hometown, is a frequent allusion in The Spirit of Ani. She doesn’t simply reflect on her activism; she finds new ways to engage. She’s proud of her track record, which allows her — self-doubt be damned — to feel as though her presence has made a difference.
“I've played my part, hopefully, in some positive changes,” she says. “More and more people that don't happen to be privileged white males are included every day in our cultural story. I think diversity and the power of it is made more real every moment in America and it's not a moment too soon for those whose full sentience and humanity is still not recognized or included.”
We live, to put it mildly, in interesting times.
“Perhaps from the outside, it may look as though my activism has dimmed in the last few years, but it hasn't,” DiFranco continues. “It's just taking different forms. I applaud, admire and support those that are on the front lines of public discourse, fists and voices raised. For me, the effect has been to go less public-facing with my work and to knuckle down harder on building a different future through various long-term projects.”
A conversation with Ani DiFranco and Lauren Coyle Rosen will take place on Tuesday, March 24 at UAlbany’s Page Hall, located at 135 Western Avenue in Albany at 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.nyswritersinstitute.org