alison bonaguro

For the past 30ish years, I've been every kind of journalist. An ad agency copywriter, a TV commercial writer and producer, a celebrity interviewer, a magazine contributor, a biographer, a feature writer and a straight news reporter. And for the past 15 of those years, my beat has been country music.

After all those years of telling other people's stories, I am finally ready to share my own. That's why I penned a memoir -- Backstaged: My 15 Years Behind the Scenes in Country Music -- to tell the stories I've never told before about what goes on backstage.

I didn't just wake up one day mid-career and decide to be a country music journalist. But I did meet Tim McGraw in 2003, and that propelled me to find a way to combine what I was good at with what I was obsessed with. Being able to make a living out of loving country music is the best gig I've ever had.