Folk-singer Eliza Blue announces Stories, Songs +Yarn Tour 2024 to celebrate new book + yarn collection

“Atop the rolling prairie hills of her family’s small ranch near Bison, S.D….she strums her acoustic guitar and sends her clear, bright vocals out in hope across Middle America.”  -NPR’s All Songs Considered

Folk-singer, author, and shepherd Eliza Blue’s performances capture a slice of ranch life through stories and songs, and offer a multi-species narrative about the discovery of her interconnection with the grassland ecosystem.  Blue’s lyrics and prose traverse the geography that carries her from soil to stars and then back again, while also imbued with the humor, joy, and surprise of transitioning from a confirmed urbanite and touring musician to a ranch hand, mother, and wife in one of the most remote counties in the contiguous United States. Blue will be signing books and selling yarn from her flock after each show.

ELIZA BLUE is a writer, folk musician, and rancher living on the short grass prairie of western South Dakota. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Guardian, and NPR’s All Songs Considered. Her weekly column, Little Pasture on the Prairie, is carried by nineteen print publications, and she has written and produced seasonal audio “postcards” from her ranch for South Dakota Public Broadcasting and Prairie Public Radio. Her first book, Accidental Rancher, was chosen as the Siouxland One Book 2023. Her second book, a compilation of her columns, is out now from the South Dakota Historical Society’s Press. Eliza currently hosts a show celebrating rural art and culture for PBS called Wish You Were Here with Eliza Blue, and she is the director of the Kithship Collective, an organization devoted to innovative, ecosystem-specific storytelling.

Press Release for Eliza’s new book: The South Dakota Historical Society Press will publish Little Pasture on the Prairie: A Decade of Tales from a Western South Dakota Ranch by Eliza Blue on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. For the last decade, Eliza Blue has written about life on a western South Dakota ranch. A transplant from Minnesota, she came to South Dakota searching for a life of fulfillment and inspiration, ultimately finding herself and so much more on her “little pasture on the prairie.”

In Eliza’s words, “These stories of my adventures—and misadventures—and the joy of waking up every day to the majesty of life on the northern plains, are my heart, my soul, the last of my youth, the beginning of my older age, and my offering at the altar of what it means to be human and to lead a life of service. I hope reading these columns brings you some measure of the peace and connection I received in writing them.”

 VIDEO: Eliza Blue performs, shares a look inside her life on the prairie

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