Alice Randall has not only written chart-topping country songs, she’s also the bestselling author of multiple novels, including The Wind Done Gone and Black Bottom Saints. She explores yet another genre — nonfiction — in her latest work, My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future, which Rosanne Cash calls “a poetic textbook of a history that has been erased.” Randall discussed her new book with Stephen Usery during a two-part interview in April.

This podcast comes courtesy of WYPL Book Talk in Memphis. Listen to part one here.