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Meet the Author/Songwriter

March 14, 2025
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

Zaq Baker | Unspectacular

 

@Beaverdale Books

Join us for a cross-dimensional presentation by songwriter and novelist, Zaq Baker, as he shares his music and his writing, along with local musician Patricia Holly. It’s all part of his debut book tour for Unspectacular: A Novel.
Mae Strand, twenty, is a compulsive liar and budding but reluctant Chicago vocalist whose mother’s mysterious prior life is starting to loom dangerously large over her own. Coerced into recording a studio album by entertainment lawyer Robert Koenid, Mae is forced to choose between a small shot at fame or music’s intrinsic value, all while she crests adulthood with her independence at stake.

A few blocks away, Ajay Chadhana is offered a rare opportunity: Skip a step in the software career he’s been building since he decamped from the cricket pitches of Eastern India to Illinois… at the cost of severely hardening his heart. As he races toward thirty, Ajay must draw a line between the advantages of corporate life and his harried nights as a session drummer — a crisis of ambition and self-care.

Zaq Baker is a songwriter, pianist, keyboardist, vocalist, co-arranger, director, performer, recording artist, and occasionally published essayist. Among other 2024 accolades, Zaq Baker’s original music is featured in a new film How to Break a World Record (Apple TV, Amazon Prime); and this summer he shared the keynote speaking and performing role at Youth Mental Health Day, a nonprofit conference with 730 attendees. In addition to albums, singles, music videos, and performances under his own name, Zaq plays in ten bands in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His prose has been published twice in accredited magazines. Unspectacular is his first novel.

He will be joined in conversation and song by Patricia Holly, singer/songwriter from Des Moines.  Her passion for singing was born from listening to her oldest sister writing original music, while her appreciation for jazz and big-band music came from listening to Frank Sinatra as a child with her father. Love of jazz continued into her teens being exposed to vintage 40’s music while playing the game Fallout. She mixed in her midwestern country roots to create a style all her own.  Patricia wrote her first song at age 16, inspired by Taylor Swift’s “Our Song”. Over the years, she has refined the combination and appreciation for the music that raised her to provide a truly unique, easy-listening experience for all that is fresh, unique, and timeless.

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