Harvard professor Stephanie Burt introduced the study of Taylor Swift to students in her 2024 course Taylor Swift and Her World, but she didn’t stop there. Burt, an award-winning poet and literary critic, dove even deeper into Swift’s sphere and wrote Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift (Basic Books, October 7). In this book, Burt offers her understanding of Swift’s remarkable success, exploring different aspects of the singer-songwriter’s career. Burt answered our questions by email.

Tell readers, briefly, about your book.

I’ve been a Swiftie of some small stripe since Red, and when my students found out in 2023, a few of them asked me to teach a course around Taylor. Which turned into a 200-person class in a lecture hall. Which turned into this book, all about what makes Taylor’s songs so powerful and memorable and popular, about how they work as words and music together, about why they speak to so many of us, and how.

What inspired you during the writing of the book? Were you encouraged by any songs or albums of Swift’s in particular?

 I found her songs encouraging and inspiring! The ones that meant the most to me turned out to be the songs where she tells us she works hard, the songs where she thinks about how much she wants us to like her, how much she wants to feel seen. “Nothing New,” “The Archer,” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

I also loved the chance to reread the novels and poems that appeared in the book, or the course, or both, as parallels or sources for her songs, such as Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark and Alexander Pope’s “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.”

What was most challenging about writing this book? And most rewarding?

Challenging (in a good way): the chapter about her album Reputation, where I address Taylor’s whiteness and the racial politics of pop music genres. White people need to think about whiteness and about white privilege more, especially white people who write about culture—but we, most of us, have grown up taking whiteness for granted, or pretending race only matters if you’re not white (that’s white privilege almost by definition). Reputation’s a great album, and I admire a lot of it, not least the way it required me to think about how white pop stars, singers, and songwriters treat historically Black kinds of music.

Will you be touring or doing events for the book this fall? Any you are especially looking forward to?

Thanks to the publicity crew at Basic Books you can expect events at bookstores, festivals, or universities, in Boston and Boston’s suburbs, Chicago, Minneapolis, Nashville, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York City. And that’s just a start. I used to live in St. Paul and feel a great deal of loyalty to Minnesota, so I’m excited about going there (Twin Cities Book Festival, early November). Nashville has meant a lot to Taylor herself, and it figures in the book, especially Chapters 1 and 2.

What fall release(s) are you most eager to get your hands on?

In no particular order: Allan Peterson’s next book of poetry, Seanan McGuire’s next Wayward Children novella, Cameron Awkward-Rich’s An Optimism.

Katarina Yerger is the Indie editorial assistant.