Amy Rigby was already a veteran of two New York indie bands—proto alt-country quartet Last Roundup and female harmony trio the Shams—when her first solo album, 1996’s Diary of a Mod Housewife, drew critical raves and catapulted her into the national spotlight. By turns angry, funny, and heartrending, its songs fused folk-rock melodies with country-western lyrics as they chronicled a disintegrating marriage (to drummer Will Rigby of power-pop legends the dB’s) and a life of transient, low-paying office jobs.

Girl to City: A Memoir with Amy Rigby The singer-songwriter shares stories from her new memoir and performs. Fri 10/25, 7 PM, Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, free, all-ages

Writing songs, it’s art in a way. It’s not you; you’re constructing something that is removed from you and who you are. Writing a book that’s about [your] experience, you have to put yourself in there. I don’t know if the word transparent is right, and you still choose what to put in, what to leave out, how to frame it, and all that. But you have to put yourself on the line in a way that I don’t think you really have to as a songwriter.

I enjoyed the parts where you recalled reading Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann and The Group by Mary McCarthy, these books that gave you glimpses of what adult women’s lives were like. Have you ever revisited any of those books as a grown-up?

I’ve been working in this bookstore since I moved to upstate New York, and that’s been fun. I can get these things into the bookstore, and it’s always a little victory when somebody buys one of these books from my past.

I think maybe the writing of the songs prompted some of the stories in the book. “Playing Pittsburgh” I actually wrote back in the late 90s and never did anything with. But when I was working on the book, it felt like it really tied into talking about Pittsburgh, so it kind of revived my interest in the song. The same is true of “Bob.” I wrote that in 2003, 2004, and played it a few times, even put it on a live-and-demo disc called Faulkner, Dylan, Heinz and Me—just made copies myself and sold that in the mid-2000s. But yeah, writing about those things kind of revived the songs for me.