The 29th Miami Book Fair International is here, and I was asked to participate. I will be hosting a conversation with Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson tomorrow afternoon (here’s the event page). He has written a book of prose letters addressed to his old friend Kurt Cobain called Letters to Kurt. Of course, everyone relates Hole and Cobain to the Nirvana singer/guitarist’s marriage to Hole’s singer Courtney Love. Even though I was in my college years, working in college radio, when the grunge scene blew up, I never knew Erlandson and Love were an item when they formed Hole. She would later marry Cobain.
So, that dirty business aside, the real focus of the book is Erlandson’s learning to come to terms with Cobain’s suicide. 
It’s in the pages, a heartfelt attempt at healing. Erlandson still seems pained by Cobain’s decision to wipe himself off the map leaving so many loose ends. Suicide is a big deal to Erlandson, as is the industry machine that chewed up Nirvana before Cobain shot himself in the head. There should be lots of interesting things discuss, far beyond the superficial relationship with Love. Letters to Kurt is a poetic testament of what the capitalist industrial art machine does to artists trying to embrace the independent ethos. Therefore, I was thrilled to have been asked by the Book Fair to do this.
The International Book Fair is something a Miami local could easily take for granted. However, every year it never fails to impress with some of the names it attracts. Some of the mostly highly coveted talks are ticketed. However, the one talk I will host is open to any fair goer. So, I am hoping some local readers of this blog will go. Let me know in a comment below and say hello at the event, of course!
Here’s a link to the Facebook event page:
Please accept my invitetion to this public event
Update: my lovely editor at “Broward Palm Beach New Times,” wrote up a quick piece on the event, interviewing both me and Erlandson. Read it by jumping through the “County Grind Blog” logo below:
