Nona Willis Aronowitz is a political and cultural writer based in New York, and an Associate Editor at Good Magazine, where she blogs regularly. She is also the editor of one of the rock critical events of the season, Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music. Willis-Aronowitz, in case you hadn’t figured it out, is also the daughter of Ellen Willis. Vinyl Deeps (which I have mentioned frequently on this site already) compiles her mother’s classic New Yorker “Rock Etc.” columns from the ’60s and ’70s, along with her other published works of rock criticism, from venues like Cheetah and the Village Voice. It is a major and long overdue collection of music criticism by one of the premier rock critics and feminists of the last 40 years.
I recently spoke with Nona Willis Aronowitz about the publication of the book, and about her mother’s life as a rock critic.
RockCritics.com 