It’s hard for me to believe, but more than 20 years have passed since I last interviewed Ani DiFranco. Since that time, she’s released another seven albums. She became a mother to a daughter and a son. She made her Broadway debut. She co-produced a song on a Margaret Cho album. She wrote a memoir and two books for young readers. Her latest book, “The Spirit of Ani: Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music & Freedom” (Akashic, 2026) was co-written with Lauren Coyle Rosen. Essentially a series of interviews, DiFranco’s voice, brilliance, and spirit, of course, come shining through on each page.
Ani generously made time for an interview in advance of her appearance at the 2026 Miami Book Fair on November 22.
When Lauren Coyle Rosen first approached you about conducting these interviews, were you aware that they would become the book “The Spirit of Ani”?
Yes. That was the idea. We would make a book together. I think initially her proposal was, “We'll just have a series of conversations and then I'll make a book.” But then after we got into it, I got excited and involved in what we were doing. We sort of edited the book together, pulled it together as a team.
In her introduction, Lauren writes about your “role as a guiding light to women, queer people, activists, and artists who wish to preserve the essence and integrity of their work.” What does that kind of laudatory description mean to you?
I don't know that it means much in terms of whatever. What's the conjugation of laudatory [laughs] in terms of the lauding [laughs]? I've been aware for, I don't know how many decades now, of just being an inspiration for others who had an inkling about finding their own path, going a different direction than the common wisdom or breaking out of the parameters that preceded them. Whether it's doing a music career independently or being outspoken about or upfront about your experience in your writing. Trying to make the structure of your career align with your politics or your vision of the world. I have so many stories from so many people who have done freaking amazing things and cite my example as this moment of permission for them. Where they were like, “Whoa, if that chick can do that, I can…” On that level, it's super thrilling to have this confirmation as the years go by that if you try to embody and stick to your own truth and what feels like the most authentic path, it's an inspiration for others to do the same. Not to do the same thing that you're doing, but to do the same in terms of listening to their own spleen. Instead of all the messages that come from the outside.
You talk about gardening numerous times in the book. Do you feel like you’ve connected with nature, plants and birds, more while living in New Orleans than anywhere else you’ve lived? I’m asking that because I live in Fort Lauderdale, but I grew up in Chicago. We have peacocks on our street here, and a variety of lizards!
I grew up in Buffalo, so I can relate. I did start gardening in Buffalo; my obsession started there. I think for me it's so much of the antidote to just being lost in the news cycle and in the socio-political, anxiety raising, endless struggle towards peace and justice. I think being a parent is also similar in that way for me. It's somewhere else to go and something else to do with your mind and your attention and your energy that is renewing. Instead of feeling constantly depleted or like you're scrambling up a muddy hillside that you'll never reach the top of. I think that feeling is debilitating after a certain point. I think we are all experiencing it in some way. For me, turning to the earth and getting dirt under my fingernails and paying attention to all the living things that are around me and tending them, caring for them. maybe mediating their struggles with each other. Like, “OK, native plants, AKA weeds, do you have a right to exist? Let's all find a way to work together.” It's so tangible and grounding, and I feel like it's made me able to breathe through the last few decades. I agree with you. Now that I live in New Orleans, it's so exciting. I'm endlessly amazed that things grow all year round and that I might be visited by a four-foot snake. It's exciting to be down in the pseudo-tropics.
Can you please say something about the act of writing a memoir such as “No Walls and the Recurring Dream” versus being part of a conversation with someone else which turns into a book such as “The Spirit of Ani.” Were there things you expressed differently than if you were the one doing the writing?
I'm sure that is true. I feel like I express things differently depending on the moment [laughs]. So, in that sense, both of those books feel the same to me. Like, “Well, that was that moment. I don't know what I said or why. I would probably express it differently today.” I guess that's, for me anyway, life and existence and constant change. Seriously, “The Spirit of Ani” book, those conversations that anchor it go back several years. It takes time, as I'm sure you know, to get something into the world. By the time it was in anybody else's hands, that book looked to me like, “Oh, wow, I can see the distance that I've already put between myself and the woman having that conversation.” Just in terms of my understanding of spirituality, of my place in the universe, of how it all works. I feel like it's growing and expanding every day. I guess in that sense I could say the same thing about every one of my albums I've ever made. For me, if I look at any of it, all I can see is what I do differently, how I am different now, how much more I understand, and how I wish I could do it all again [laughs].
I’m glad that you mentioned your albums because in the fourth chapter Lauren referred to the song “Every State Line” from 1992’s “Imperfectly” album because the song feels as timely as ever. Would you agree with that?
Jeez, well, I can see what you're saying and, unfortunately, yeah. I remember writing a song about gun violence in 1998 or 99 that expressed: how has it gone this far? This insanity! And how many decades ago is that? I could sing it tomorrow and it would be nothing if not more heart-sickening to sing. For that matter, I could sing a Woody Guthrie song that was written 100 years ago and it is relevant. In that sense, it's kind of heavy. Making political statements or social commentary in your art and experiencing how, unfortunately, songs can stay relevant much longer than your hopeful nature thought they would.
In the second chapter, you talk about the artist who did the illustrations for your children’s book “Knowing,” and her interpretation of your words through images. Do you feel the same way when you hear a performer cover one of your songs?
For sure. Every object transforms, depending on who's holding it. That's the beauty of it. Speaking of Woody Guthrie, I just got a text from a fellow performer, musician friend the other day. She's going to sing “Amazing Grace” in a performance she's doing. She said that a recording that I made of “Amazing Grace” back in the late ‘90s on my “Dilate” album, to her, “that's how the song goes. I kind of want to perform it like you did. Is that OK with you?” I was like, “Dude. That's more than OK. That means we're in it. We're in the game.” I think I texted her back, “Folk music is a game of telephone. That's how it works.” There's such joy in that. Passing objects and stories and melodies and ideas around and picking them up from each other and growing them and keeping them alive or evolving them.
In chapter five, you address when your fans became upset with you “for not just being a lesbian.” You described it as being your “first dance with my own tribe turning on me.” Does it still trouble you?
The overarching culture of “gotcha” troubles me. The way that we're all so isolated and judging each other from afar. That is deeply troubling in all the forms that it takes. I remember when I was young, there were just so many examples around me of women who were deeply feminist, who were really trying to show up every day for the struggle for women's liberation and queer liberation, often as well, but then are condemned for whatever. When I went to the New School for Social Research in New York when I was 18, 19, 20 and I took feminism 101 and I took queer literature. I was just a budding me, following my passions and my interests. I remember the woman who taught this queer literature class was a revolutionary dyke from way back who had gotten together with a man in her middle age and lost all her friends in her community. Hopefully those days are over, just the way the opposite of when you decide I'm going to be openly queer and you lose all your friends and community. All that shit just needs to stop in any form that it takes. Unfortunately, I feel like that has escalated, if anything, in this modern era. I don't think that it's serving any of us. I'm a child of the 70s, so identity politics were -- and I think we got into this in “The Spirit of Ani” -- a really essential liberating force for so many people to raise their hands and say, “I'm here, too.” It looks different from my perspective. Somehow, I feel like over the decades, I've watched identity politics become a weapon of war, instead of a force of freeing all the prisoners. It's an interesting dynamic and I just pray in my way every day for more mercy, for less judgment. For more kinship across supposed battle lines.
