Tom Piazza's new book brings readers inside his unexpected friendship with John Prine

Tom Piazza is a novelist who occasionally moonlights as a music writer.

Across the pages of his latest nonfiction book, he’s both.

The New Orleans-based author’s “Living In the Present with John Prine” (W.W. Norton & Company) is a vivid, intimate narrative of the last two years of the acclaimed country-folk singer-songwriter’s life as viewed through the lens of their friendship.

It is not the book Piazza expected to write.

His catalog includes jazz studies and a post-Hurricane Katrina love letter to his adopted hometown, “Why New Orleans Matters.” More recently, he’s devoted himself to novels, including 2015’s “A Free State” and 2023’s “The Auburn Conference.”

What he typically doesn’t do is write musician profiles. It had been more than two decades since he expanded an article about