Punk, Pages, and a Love Story Born from The Gits—Melissa Meszaros & Steve Moriarty Take Their Memoirs on Tour This Fall

Where punk’s legacy meets unflinching memoirs, a tour rises. Blending survival, music, and an unexpected romance shaped by words…

When author and publicist Melissa Meszaros (Song Over the Bones, Headpress/Oil on Water Press, October 2, 2025) reached out to writer and musician Steve Moriarty (Mia Zapata & The Gits, Feral House, 2024) for a simple blurb request, neither expected the exchange to change their lives. What began as a professional email became something far more enduring: an ongoing dialogue that spilled across inboxes, text threads, and late-night phone calls that stretched until dawn. Out of the words came a connection. Out of connection came love. And now, out of love comes a punk-infused joint book tour unlike any other.

Meszaros’s Song Over the Bones is the follow-up to her best-selling debut memoir, Heavy Metal Headbang (2022). Where her first book carved out the raw chaos of her early years, her latest book digs deeper, confronting fire, abandonment, and survival with an unflinching eye. Music forms the spine of her story—an anchor that pulled her through, especially the music of The Gits. Long before she met Moriarty, the band’s songs carried her through grief, heartbreak, and the moments when nothing else could. Told in a nonlinear, defiant voice, her memoir is not just a recounting of events but a reckoning with the ways music rewires memory and becomes a lifeline when everything else falls apart.

Moriarty’s Mia Zapata & The Gits arrived in 2024 as both a celebration and a reflection. Candid, clear-eyed, and critically acclaimed, it traces the history of the band he co-founded in Seattle’s early ’90s grunge scene—a punk band whose fire and honesty still resonate with fans around the world. The book pulses with humor and grit, capturing the friendships, road stories, and the creative spark that made The Gits unforgettable.

Together, the books form a conversation: one written from the crowd, one from the stage. Both testify to the way music doesn’t just soundtrack lives; it saves them. Both embody the messy, luminous truth of survival and connection. And in a testament to their shared sensibility, both Meszaros’s and Moriarty’s writing styles have drawn comparisons to Patti Smith: lyrical, raw, poetic, and unapologetically alive.

That conversation now takes shape on the road. This fall, Meszaros and Moriarty will embark on a U.S. book tour that blends memoir, music, and the unexpected ways connection arrives. The tour kicks off in Brooklyn on October 9, with more dates on the horizon.

FALL 2025 TOUR DATES:

10/9 — Lucky 13, Brooklyn, NY

10/11 — Atomic Books, Baltimore, MD

11/13 — Easy Street, Seattle, WA

11/14 — Hi-Voltage Records & Books, Tacoma, WA

11/15 — Browsers Bookshop, Olympia, WA

11/16 — Rose City Book Pub, Portland, OR

“I just wanted a blurb,” said Meszaros. “I wrote about a relationship wreck and never thought it would land me here, in love and on a book tour with someone who inspires me every day. It’s hilarious and perfect in all the ways I never expected.”

“The Gits’ music has always carried a legacy bigger than the band itself,” added Moriarty. “It has lived on through the people it touched and the communities it helped shape. This tour feels like a continuation of that story—honoring where the music came from while sharing how Melissa and I discovered something entirely new within it.”

Each event will be more than a reading. Expect nights of conversation and storytelling, where the boundary between audience and authors dissolves. Expect music threaded throughout, stories of survival and reinvention, and the kinds of unscripted moments that only happen when history, memory, and emotion collide. These evenings aren’t about nostalgia—they’re about honoring where the music came from and showing how it continues to evolve, shaping not only the communities it touched but also the love story at the heart of this tour.

For the survivors, fans of grunge, readers of memoirs, and those who believe in the enduring pulse of music and the strange ways it carries us into new chapters, this tour promises something singular: two lives, two books, and another story in progress.

For updates, follow Melissa Meszaros (@thisismelissameszaros) and Steve Moriarty (@steve.moriarty) on Instagram. Preorder Song Over the Bones today, and find Mia Zapata & The Gits now on shelves wherever books are sold.

Melissa Meszaros
Don’t Hide PR