Lauren (Lou) Turner is a writer and musician who plays solo as well as in the band Styrofoam Winos. She’s the author of Shape Note Singing (VA Press, 2021) and the editor of Quarter Notes, a literary magazine with a musical ear.
the long version
Lauren (Lou) Turner is a writer and musician who plays solo as well as in the band Styrofoam Winos. She’s the author of Shape Note Singing (VA Press, 2021) and the editor of Quarter Notes, a literary magazine with a musical ear. Born and raised in central Texas and now based in Nashville, she co-founded the Winos with Trevor Nikrant and Joe Kenkel and is an occasional touring member for other bands like Peter One and Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band.
Turner made her label debut with 2020’s Songs for John Venn (SPINSTER)— called “some kind of low-key masterpiece” by Aquarium Drunkard, it heralded her as “one of the most promising indie rock songwriters in Nashville” (NPR Music). With Venn, Turner and her collaborators layered genre-bending production around her folk songs, ranging from flute-flecked kraut-rock to 70’s AM radio warmth. Turner’s third album Microcosmos (SPINSTER) was named a Best Album of 2022 by NPR Music‘s Ann Powers, Aquarium Drunkard, Uncut Magazine, and others; and presents her songwriting at its most focused and spare yet, while also exploring the collaborative energy of live recording with her Winos bandmates as a backing band. A wryly self-proclaimed “domestic troubadour record,” it simultaneously hangs a backdrop of a spaghetti western-inspired landscape and playfully subverts the troubadour archetype via Turner’s celebrations of the infinitesimal.
Turner was the recipient of Nashville’s Metro Arts Thrive Grant as well as a solo artist residency from The Cabins in 2023, where she completed her MFA thesis in poetry for Randolph College’s low-residency program. The 2024 winner of The Porch Prize in Poetry, recent work has appeared in OEI’s Aural Poetics, Noir Sauna, Voicemail Poems, The Continental Review, EcoTheo, museum of americana, and elsewhere — and she regularly contributes interviews, reviews, and music writing to Chapter 16.org and Aquarium Drunkard. You can catch her in Nashville at readings and shows, occasionally on the road, and teaching poetry at The Porch Writers Collective.
