Lessons & Lace lets readers immerse themselves in Stevie Nicks‘s incredible life, to learn invaluable pearls of wisdom from this portrait of one of today’s most resilient music icons. Scroll down to find our more on the book, and read an exclusive interview with the author.

Acclaimed music and culture journalist Rachel Brodsky has announced that her debut book titled Lessons & Lace, a Stevie Nicks biography is due out September 15, 2026 via Harmony/Penguin Random House. Revered for meticulous reporting and unparalleled creativity throughout Rachel’s career, Lessons & Lace is a completely unique take on a biography. Structured according to different themes — rather than chronologically — each chapter centres on a different life lesson that Stevie has absorbed and later dispensed wisdom on. 

Stevie Nicks is rock’s own Patron Saint of Lessons Learned, but in order to reach this point she had to endure a world that underestimated, misunderstood, dismissed, and mocked her. She battled sexist narratives, helped popularize a struggling mid-level rock band, became a successful solo act, and beat addiction, all while staying connected to her creativity, authenticity, and mysticism. Drawing from archival first-person interviews and insights from people in Stevie Nicks’ world, Lessons & Lace chronicles her remarkable story with notable quotes to inspire hard-learned, life-changing lessons.

Brodsky shares, “Very few artists have maintained their cultural relevance and appealed to multiple generations like Stevie Nicks. Lessons & Lace recounts Stevie’s path to becoming the wisdom-dispersing fairy godmother we know her as today. I think sometimes we forget how much skepticism she faced from the music industry and her peers (even her friend and collaborator Tom Petty!), the uphill climb she faced to be taken seriously as a true artist and writer, what it took to overcome her struggles with addiction, and how she inspired new generations of musicians to write with their own combinations of vulnerability and strength. That is why I love Stevie. She is as layered in meaning as her most memorable songs. Like the book’s namesake, “Leather and Lace,” Stevie is soft and hard, romantic and practical, sensual and sensible. I genuinely hope readers walk away feeling inspired to live their lives with Stevie-style authenticity, bravery, and truth.” 

Illustrated with gorgeous full-colour line drawings, Lessons & Lace is a tribute to a woman, style icon, prolific writer, and unapologetic romantic who chases happiness and values the space to honestly and authentically be herself. Through Stevie’s life and lessons, you’ll feel encouraged to embrace your own wild (and perhaps witchy) heart.

“Just dance. This will pass. Love will find a way. It always does.”

Rachel Broadsky – Credit Taylor Barefoot

Rachel Brodsky is a culture and music journalist, critic, reporter, and author living in LA. She has held staff positions with Stereogum, The Independent, Grammy.com, SPIN, CBS, and MTV. Her writing about music, TV, comedy, podcasts, film, gender, and lifestyle has been published by outlets including TIME, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, Nylon, The Ringer, InStyle, Bustle, The Guardian, Vulture, GQ, and others.

theBUZZ had an opportunity to chat with author Rachel Brodsky to find out more about her first book publication, her decision to go with Stevie Nicks, and

You’ve worked as a journalist in the music industry and have contributed to many publications, so you’ve obviously had an opportunity to speak with many musicians. What was the inspiration behind you wanting to write your first book as a biography on Stevie Nicks, and how did you make that dream come true?

I’d been thinking about writing a book for a while. Every now and then, a colleague or someone who’d written a book before would say to me, “If you ever have an idea for a book, I could probably connect you with an / my agent.” And I would think, “Gosh, I don’t even know where to begin.”  So I started brainstorming. Initially, I wrote a few sample chapters of a personal memoir, and doing that actually landed me an agent, the wonderful Kara Rota.

But ‘Lessons & Lace’ started in a more kismet fashion. One day, early in the new year of 2025, I checked my email and noticed that an editor from Harmony Books / Penguin Random House had reached out wanting to know if I’d have any interest in working together on a “prescriptive biography” of Stevie Nicks. I sent back the fastest, easiest “yes” email I’ve ever sent. If I had to write a biography of anyone in the music industry, Stevie would’ve been in the top 5. I’ve been a huge Fleetwood Mac fan for my entire life, and a couple of years prior to starting on this project, I’d written liner notes for a vinyl reissue of their 1975 self-titled album.

After working through the concept of this biography, which was intended to shape Stevie’s life across the different lessons she’s needed to learn in order to arrive where she has as an icon of pop/rock/fashion, I really just took the initial idea and ran with it. My editor, Donna Loffredo, seemed really cool with my injecting my voice and a few personal anecdotes as it related to Stevie’s life into the manuscript, and I so appreciated that.

What’s behind the title “Lessons & Lace”, and what direction did you take as a writer to give a fully rounded composite of an extraordinary musician?

I have always loved tinkering with song titles and lyrics to express a point or craft a headline. So when my editor described the “prescriptive” angle of this biography, I started sifting through solo song titles by Stevie Nicks (as opposed to Fleetwood Mac). I kept landing on her 1982 duet with Don Henley, “Leather and Lace,” which I tweaked to “Lessons and Lace.” In addition to just sounding cool – alliteration! – I liked how the song’s lyrics describe Stevie as a person so well (I search only for something I can’t see/ I have my own life/ And I am stronger than you know). I realize it’s a love song describing two people who seem so different but ultimately compliment one another (Give to me your leather/ take from me my lace), but I also feel like the contrasts capture Stevie as a person, someone who is a gentle romantic but also highly pragmatic and firm in her intentions.  

In terms of directions, I think after solidifying the full chapter outline with my editor, the rest sort of took care of itself.

With an artist with so much history behind her, how did you ensure that you were able to gather the content you needed to fulfill your overall concept of the book?

I’m grateful to the archivists who have posted 50+ years’ worth of interviews and reviews with Stevie online. I spent a lot of time on The Nicks Fix, which has archived nearly every print and radio interview Stevie ever did! 

I also spent a lot of time on The Wayback Machine, YouTube, and Rolling Stone’s website. Rolling Stone has archived nearly every piece ever published – or at least, the pieces concerning its most revered artists, Stevie and Fleetwood Mac included. 

To round things out, I purchased existing Stevie biographies, including Stephen Davis’ Gold Dust Woman and Zoë Howe’s Visions, Dreams, and Rumors, plus Simon Morrison’s Mirror in the Sky, which goes a little deeper on Stevie’s music. I even bought a DVD player for the first time in years to watch the 2013 In Your Dreams documentary, which isn’t streaming anywhere.

Finally, I purchased a few books on Fleetwood Mac, including Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac author Sean Egan, which compiled multiple band interviews across the decades. (Though most of these were on The Nicks Fix.)  

This is all to say, I just went crazy with research. I totally immersed myself and then looked for patterns and recurring themes in stuff Stevie said about herself and her life and tried to form story arcs for how those patterns continued, or changed.

Without giving too much away, are there things that you learned while researching that surprised and/or shocked you about her personally and/or her career?

The main thing I keep coming back to is the dissonance between how I was raised in the ‘90s to think of Stevie Nicks versus how she was initially perceived by male rock critics in the ‘70s, and even by her idol-turned-collaborator Tom Petty in the early ‘80s. 

When I was growing up, Stevie Nicks was already a rock icon. Up-and-coming singers like Sheryl Crow, Sarah McLachlan, Courtney Love, and – much later – Taylor Swift looked to Stevie as a huge source of inspiration in their careers. I think much of this reverence started in earnest after Fleetwood Mac released The Dance live album in 1997. It reignited the cultural conversation around Stevie, Lindsey Buckingham, and the whole of Fleetwood Mac. A few years prior, when Stevie released her Street Angel album, it felt like the industry was sort of finished with her, because it was not a critically acclaimed record, Stevie appeared less engaged and (naturally) did not look the same as she had in her younger years, and she was coming off of a paralyzing addiction to Klonopin. But after the success of The Dance, it was like people couldn’t get enough of her or Fleetwood Mac.

Anyway, my research revealed that even in the ‘70s, as Stevie was joining Fleetwood Mac, rock critics (mostly male) were confused by her. They didn’t “get” her California-coded look or the way she talked about witches, or described things as being “very Rhiannon.” Legendary rock critic Lester Bangs called Stevie “an airhead” and “a puffball” in a 1977 issue of Creem. 

Even Tom Petty was skeptical about working with her at first prior to Bella Donna, her 1981 debut album. Petty and the Heartbreakers saw themselves as being kind of punk rock – grittier, not a corporate, money-making machine – compared to the commercial appeal of Fleetwood Mac, which is all they knew Stevie from prior to embarking on her solo career. Stevie had to convince Tom and his bandmates that she was a “legitimate” artist, as opposed to the more “corporate” idea they had of her and Fleetwood Mac.     

Now that you’ve completed your first book, do you have aspirations to write other biographies? If so, are there any potential artists of interest to you that you might reach out to?

Yes, now that I’ve written this biography, books are all I want to do! I am actually working on a new proposal, but I don’t want to jinx anything by talking about it too much, haha. I’ve also thought about other “Lessons”-themed music biographies – I think Dolly Parton would make for an incredible one. I’m also super interested in co-writing a bio with an artist. I’ve written so many band bios, it just feels like a natural extension. I love diving into someone else’s life and helping them / their fans to make sense of it. 

Lessons & Lace is available Sept 15, 2026 from Harmony/Penguin Random House

About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist with a focus on travel, lifestyle, entertainment and hospitality. He has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He enjoys discovering delicious eats, tasting spirited treats, and being mesmerized by musical beats.