I Sing to Use the Waiting: A Collection of Essays about the Women Singers Who've Made Me Who I Am is a vital and affecting reflection on how popular culture can shape personal identity. With remarkable grace, candor, and a poet’s ear for prose, Zachary Pace recounts the women singers―from Cat Power to Madonna, Kim Gordon to Rihanna―who shaped them as a young person coming-of-age in rural New York, first discovering their own queer voice. Structured like a mixtape, Pace juxtaposes their coming out with the music that informed them along the way. They recount how listening to themselves sing along as a child to a Disney theme song they recorded on a boom box in 1995, was when they first realized there was an effeminate inflection to their voice. As childhood friendships splinter, Pace discusses the relationship between Whitney Houston and Robyn Crawford. Cat Power’s song “My Daddy Was a Musician” spurs a discussion of Pace’s own musician father, and their gradual estrangement. Resonant and compelling, I Sing to Use the Waiting is a deeply personal rumination on how queer stories are abundant yet often suppressed, and how music may act as a comforting balm carrying us through difficult periods and decisions. "Meticulously researched and thrillingly individual... Part of what makes Pace’s book so refreshing is that the author is uninterested in finding, or inventing, breadcrumb trails that point to an artist’s sexuality, or assembling an alternative taxonomy of LGBTQ+ anthems. Rather, queerness is a kaleidoscopic filter that can destabilize familiar narratives about the artists you love, find hidden nuances, or empower your wildest takes. It’s a bold stance to say that all sound is queer; In I Sing to Use the Waiting , Pace says you may just have to listen closely." ―Owen Myers, Pitchfork REVIEW: "Zachary Pace’s New Book Offers a New Way to Look at Queer Music" "Zachary Pace’s I Sing to Use the Waiting: A Collection of Essays About the Women Singers Who’ve Made Me Who I Am has the propulsive charm of a well-crafted playlist―a form so suited to mapping its maker’s passions and preoccupations, shames and joys. Whether considering their own gender and sexuality, the social and economic strictures within which we live, or what psychoanalytic theory can teach us about the cinematic performances of Whitney Houston and Cher, Pace writes with a poet’s attunement to language and an archivist’s love of the deep cut. By turns personal, critical, and dazzlingly ekphrastic, this debut introduces a mind worth tuning into." ―Jameson Fitzpatrick, BOMB INTERVIEW: "Zachary Pace by Jameson Fitzpatrick: The writer on the resonance of music and crafting identity through song" (Feb 1, 2024) "A stunning testament to the effects music (and musicians) have on our lives." ―David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy AUTHOR PLAYLISTS: Zachary Pace’s playlist for their essay collection I Sing to Use the Waiting (Jan. 23, 2024) "This stunning essay collection explores sound, gender, queerness, survival, and the shaping of identity through voice and pop culture. Blending reportage, cultural criticism, and personal narrative, this beautiful, intimate debut is definitely the best 2024 book I’ve read so far." ―Rachel León, Chicago Review of Books "Most Anticipated Books of January" " 'Tell each other how We sang/To Keep the Dark away,' ends the Emily Dickinson poem from which Pace gets the title of this collection, which explores gender, sexuality and liberation." ―Shreya Chattopadhyay, The New York Times "Paperback Row: 6 New Paperbacks to Read This Week" "In I Sing to Use the Waiting, Zachary Pace writes about how women singers shaped their coming-of-age and discovering their queerness. Throughout the collection, the writer explores a variety of topics, including an essay about how Disney’s Pocahontas reinforces racist, misogynistic, and homophobic views." ―Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful INTERVIEW & EXCERPT: “Colors of the Wind,” an excerpt from Zachary Pace's I Sing to Use the Waiting . (Jan. 23, 2024) "The essays each center on a singer (or group of singers) who were influential, and Pace’s style is smart and analytical, while still being vulnerable and personal. The essay collection as a whole forms a mosaic of Zachary as an individual along with the 1980s-2000s so familiar to many of us." ―Lara Lillibridge, Hippocampus Magazine INTERVIEW: "Zachary Pace, Author of I Sing to Use the Waiting " "It is music that enabled Pace to find comfort in their identity, and it is their writing about music that provides readers an entryway into their world. As they say in their strong, affirming poetic voice, 'Language isn’t a virus, language is a remedy.' Through their words in I Sing To Use The Waiting , Pace allows us to step into their world for a brief moment of time and heal with them." ―Edward Banchs, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette REVIEW: I Sing to Use the Waiting "Zachary Pace is, at heart, a fan. Their writing