Franz Nicolay

Franz Nicolay is a musician and writer living in New Yorks Hudson Valley. In addition to records under his own name (a natural-born starPitchfork), he was a member of cabaret-punk orchestra World/Inferno Friendship Society, worlds best bar band the Hold Steady (one of the all-time great New York bandsRolling Stone), Balkan-jazz quartet Guignol, co-founded the composer-performer collective Anti-Social Music, was a touring member of agit-punks Against Me!; and recordedor performed with dozens of other acts. His first book, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar, was named a Seasons Best Travel Book by The New York Times. His second book, the novel Someone Should Pay For Your Pain, was called a knockout fiction debut by Buzzfeed; and was named one of Rolling Stone Best Music Books of 2021 (finally, the great indie-rock novellike Dostoyevsky in a DIY punk space). In fall 2024, his third book Band People, a non-fiction study of the working and creative lives of musicians, will appear on University of Texas Press American Music series. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, The Paris Review Daily, The Kenyon Review Online, Ploughshares, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. He has taught at UCBerkeley and in Columbia Universitys MFA fiction program, and is currently a faculty member in music and written arts at Bard College.