Voice Lessons is a collection of personal essays about a shy introvert’s struggle to find her voice—as a singer, a writer, a mother, and a human being. Using traditional narrative and hybrid forms, author Eve Krakow explores the early loss of her mother, her innermost anxieties as a young adult, the building of family, the push and pull of heritage and tradition, and more. Juxtaposing shyness in life with boldness on stage, these stories expose the deep-seated need for human connection and belonging.

What makes us shy? And what does it take to bring an introvert out of her shell? In evoking the quotidian delights of a familiar field or an urban neighbourhood, the thrills and terrors of performance, the sorrows, confusions, and joys of family life, and the satisfactions of writing itself, these lyrical and inventive essays suggest some answers. Voice Lessons will make you want to tap your feet, hum, break into full-throated song.

— Susan Olding, author of Big Reader

I devoured Voice Lessons in two sittings. Eve Krakow writes beautifully about the ordinary and the extraordinary as she takes us on her journey to finding her voice. Along the way, she captures the aches—both big and small—and joys of “becoming.” I’ve been a fan of Krakow’s writing for years, and her voice in this debut memoir sings loud and strong.

—Rachel Laverdiere, former creative nonfiction editor at Atticus Review and Barren Magazine

Voice Lessons hits every note in the human register with acuity and grace. The essays in this unconventional memoir trace the emergence of an artist from her beginnings as a shy, motherless ten-year-old to her growing assurance as a woman and mother determined to reclaim the past and render it in her own words.

—Claire Holden Rothman, author of Lear’s Shadow

In this collection of intricate and tender essays, Eve Krakow avows history as her least favourite subject yet reveals her skill as a weaver of memory, stitching together the wisps and fragments of her life with silken threads.

—Gina Roitman, author of Don’t Ask and Tell Me a Story, Tell Me the Truth

Voice Lessons is a series of essays, each thread of its evocative narrative nuanced and carefully woven to give a beautiful tapestry of the whole. The essays tell the story of an awkward child, who through life experiences and the gift of compassionate introspection finds her authentic self. Eve Krakow writes these stories with a gentle lyricism that is at the same time provocative and insightful. She writes that she feels music in her soul. It reveals itself in a flow of her words that engages the reader from the very first page to the last.

—Rita Pomade, author of Seeker: A Sea Odyssey