A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story

Petal Pusher

by Laurie Lindeen

Set in the years between the meteoric launches of Madonna and Courtney Love, Petal Pusher takes readers on a stirring journey across rock and roll, from the big-haired 1980s to the grunge-filled 1990s, when Laurie Lindeen brought her all-girl band, Zuzu’s Petals, to compete in the indie rock arena.

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Author, teacher, musician

Laurie Lindeen

Introductions

  • Recent Wash Ashore on the island of Martha’s Vineyard
  • Author of the memoir Petal Pusher
  • Essayist
  • Professor of Writing and Literature
  • College Entrance Essay Coach
  • Mom
  • Public speaker
  • Singer/songwriter for Zuzu’s Petals
  • Mean waitress at Al’s Breakfast and Dock Street Coffee Shop
  • Co-founder of reading and music series “Morningside After Dark”
Read More

Author, teacher, musician

Laurie Lindeen

Introductions

  • Recent Wash Ashore on the island of Martha’s Vineyard
  • Author of the memoir Petal Pusher
  • Essayist
  • Professor of Writing and Literature
  • College Entrance Essay Coach
  • Mom
  • Public speaker
  • Singer/songwriter for Zuzu’s Petals
  • Mean waitress at Al’s Breakfast and Dock Street Coffee Shop
  • Co-founder of reading and music series “Morningside After Dark”
Read More

Other Writing

Johnny Goes to College

I am about to travel cross-country in a fully loaded station wagon with my ex-husband. We are taking our only child to college in Colorado, where he will be starting his first year, and we are doing this as a family.

Read on nytimes.com

 Confessions of a
Former Slur Girl​

Almost twenty years after the fact, I have to ask myself: Did I create a band and forge a career in music because it was a job at which one is pretty much expected to drink?​

Read on huffpost.com
color illustration of blonde woman in blue shirt and red pants climbing a hill

My Third Act

It’s one of those incomparable warm September evenings in Minneapolis. I’m about to turn 60. To celebrate, I rented the outside venue at the Hook and Ladder night club and hired my favorite local superstar-studded cover band, Zeppo

Read on minnesotaalumni.org
  • “Farewell to Nye’s,” 10,000 Takes, Minneapolis Star Tribune, November, 3, 2015
  • “You Don’t Know Me At All,” MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL magazine, April, 2015
  • “The Memoir Quilt,” The Broken Plate Literary Magazine, 2009, Ball State University
  • “Rock this Way,” Fictionary, October 2009, Literary Magazine, Columbia College
  • “Uncool, Not Cute,” July 24, 2009, Drinking Diaries

“

Petal Pusher is so personal and true, like the best music and the best writing. Laurie Lindeen is the rarest combination of both – an author who knows how to put her musical soul on every page of this wonderful book. It’s a road trip, a diary, and a beautiful dance through the elixir-filled rooms where music is made, greatness is courted…and finally found in the quiet perfection of Lindeen’s own life.

– Cameron Crowe

“

Laurie Lindeen writes the same way Zuzu’s Petals used to rock: With authentic detail, endearing sincerity, and the innate ability to reflect a certain place at a certain time (with a voice that belongs only to her).

– Chuck Klosterman

“

Laurie Lindeen has deftly swirled a whole generation’s angst and idealism into a wild ride of a road book that redefines the genre. Indie rock is the landscape, but American ardor is the subject. By turns comic and bittersweet, Petal Pusher introduces a vibrant new voice that renews the abiding American longing for the big time – finally a girl as Gatsby! But this girl doesn’t die, and she doesn’t lie. She gets her second chance – and uses it. A beauty of a book.

– Patricia Hampl

“

My copy of Petal Pusher has exactly two dog-eared pages, because I was so riveted that I only managed to put the book down twice (and only for necessities like food and water). The events in Petal Pusher are like some fantastic, dramatic movie — but at the same time, every anecdote is so relatable, and the writing so intimate, that you may feel, as I did, that Laurie Lindeen has somehow read through your own journal entries and raided them for material. I love this book.

– Jane Pratt

“

Laurie Lindeen writes beautifully about both sides of the rock and roll mirror – how it feels to be in the audience looking up and what it’s like on the stage looking down. She writes with the honesty of a Who song, the humor of the Ramones, and the eye for detail of Joni Mitchell. Petal Pusher is music set to words.

– Bill Flanagan