Every generation carries its myths about the guitar, about who gets to hold it and who gets to define it. Canadian blues guitarist Sue Foley takes those myths apart in her new book ‘Guitar Women: Conversations & Life Lessons with Six-String Heroines,’ out June 9 via Sutherland House.
The 406-page book moves beyond the old assumptions through intimate conversations with women who shaped the instrument’s sound and story. Part oral history, part memoir, and part cultural reckoning, it spans generations and genres, featuring artists like Bonnie Raitt, Nancy Wilson, Charo, Suzi Quatro, Joan Armatrading, and Sharon Isbin.
Foley writes from the inside, drawing on her own experience as a touring guitarist to meet these artists as a peer. The result is a collection of deeply human accounts of persistence, artistry, and devotion to the instrument, shared in the players’ own words. Taken together, they reveal a richer, more truthful lineage of the guitar, one told through the lives of the women who have always been at its heart.
Foley brings serious credentials to the project. She has released 15 albums since her debut ‘Young Girl Blues,’ won a Blues Music Award in the Koko Taylor Award category in 2020, and recently defended her PhD thesis on women and the guitar. That blend of stage experience and scholarship makes her an ideal guide for a book this ambitious.