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On October 26, 2025, musicians Lucy Dacus and Rufus Wainwright graced the stage for a conversation with New Yorker staff writer Amanda Petrusich at the 26th annual New Yorker Festival, a weekend brimming with discussions, screenings, performances, and much more. The Festival, the magazine’s quintessential affair, took place in New York City and convened leading figures in literature, cinema, comedy, television, politics, and medicine.
Lucy Dacus is a singer-songwriter, a guitarist, and a recording producer. She commenced her music career in Richmond, Virginia, and has issued four studio albums, among them “No Burden,” “Historian,” and “Home Video,” which concentrated on the realms of childhood and adolescence. Alongside her independent endeavors, Dacus teamed up with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker to establish the band boygenius. Their album, “The Record,” launched in 2023, amassed widespread recognition and secured the trio three Grammy Awards. Dacus’s most recent solo album, “Forever Is a Feeling,” delves into love, longing, and grand romance. It saw release in March and debuted at the pinnacle of both the Billboard Rock Album Charts and the Billboard Folk/Americana Album Charts.
Rufus Wainwright is a vocalist, a songwriter, and a composer, acclaimed for what the New York Times calls his “authentic originality.” He has put out eleven studio albums, including the Grammy-nominated albums “Unfollow the Rules” and “Folkocracy”; three DVDs; and six live albums, including “Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall,” also nominated for a Grammy Award. He has penned two operas and copious songs for motion pictures and TV programs. His first musical, an adaptation of John Cassavetes’s “Opening Night” crafted with Ivo van Hove, had its initial showing in 2024. In the same year, his “Dream Requiem” was first performed with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. The recording was put out by Warner Classics in 2025, and was succeeded by the U.S. première, in Los Angeles.
Amanda Petrusich is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the writer of three books. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her nonfiction and has also been nominated for a Grammy Award. Her criticism and features have been printed in the New York Times, Oxford American, Spin, Pitchfork, GQ, Esquire, The Atlantic, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Her book “Do Not Sell at Any Price” scrutinizes obsessive collectors of 78-r.p.m. records. She is the writer-in-residence at New York University’s Gallatin School.
Sourse: newyorker.com
