The latest edition of Sarah McColl’s Lost Art is an audio essay about folk singer Connie Converse. It explores the life, stifled ambitions, and legacy of this singer from the ’50s who never broke through and eventually disappeared into the thin blue air. (The leading theory is that she drove her car into a lake.) Throughout the essay, Sarah interweaves Converse’s story with her own life. It’s a beautiful piece of writing—and even more beautiful read aloud in Sarah’s voice, with graceful editing and snippets of song.
In the intro, Sarah reveals that this is the essay that started the whole Lost Art project—Lost Art is a longrunning newsletter project that explores the “creative lives & works of (mostly) dead women.” By releasing an audio edition of the essay, Sarah revives and improves on the original.
We’re big fans of this project in my household, and I love that Sarah’s now pivoting to audio essays. It’s a delightful way to consume a lyric essay about a singer-songwriter. If you have half an hour to spare, there are a million worse ways to spend it.
