By NPLF
The Nashville Public Library Foundation is proud to present Mary Gauthier as this year’s String City performer. Gauthier is a Grammy-nominated American folk singer-songwriter and author whose work masterfully explores the complexities of love, loss, resilience, and triumph.
Gauthier has always been an avid reader. “When I was a kid, my mama would drop me off at the Baton Rouge Public Library on Saturday morning when it opened and pick me up when it closed. I worked my way out of the kids’ section pretty quickly,” she recalls.
As an adult, Gauthier continues to make fond library memories, now as a patron of Nashville Public Library. Some of her most memorable experiences include attending the many events hosted at the library during the Southern Festival of Books, and she has also been a celebrated performer at the library’s Courtyard Concerts. Gauthier values libraries as “quiet places of reading, study, and contemplation.” The library provides a “space to both read and write,” two essential components in the creative process. “They will always be relevant,” she says.
Gauthier credits several books with changing her life, but none like writing her own. She spent six years writing Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting, released in 2021. “I wanted to get my teaching into a book,” she says, which has reached “more people than I could ever teach in person.”
NPLF is grateful that Gauthier will share her considerable talents with Foundation supporters when she takes the stage as the featured performer for the String City fundraiser on March 1. The event will be an evening of celebration, a performance of Wishing Chair’s String City: Nashville’s Tradition of Music and Puppetry, and live music set following the show. Proceeds will benefit transformative programming at Nashville Public Library. For tickets, click the button below.