Liz Phair's second career: novelist?

We caught up with Liz Phair earlier this week after the second show of her sold-out performance of "Exile in Guyville" at the Troubadour (read Ann Powers' take on Phair's re-issue of "Exile" here), and asked her to confirm a sneaking suspicion we had that she might be writing something other than songs these days.   

"I thought to myself, what can I do better than other people?" she postulated post-encore from the side of the stage after greeting friends and fans. "I'm not the best singer," she demurred, adding that "I'm not the best songwriter, either. But I do tell stories well."

Phair's publicist confirmed Tuesday that the Connecticut-born singer has a literary agent, but Phair, currently a South Bay resident, was adamant on Monday that nothing is currently in the works, so don't expect to see anything at your local Barnes & Noble just yet. The songstress did say that she was not interested in pursuing a memoir, a la Juliana Hatfield's just-released offering "When I Grow Up" or Chris Connelly's "Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible and Fried," but rather, a work of fiction.

Phair, who penned a book review of Dean Wareham's "Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance" earlier this year for the New York Times, clearly has a talent for sketching out characters (listening to "Exile in Guyville" is akin to reading a novel, with memorable dialogue and a richly drawn cast), and it's not a huge stretch to imagine her writing a contemporary novel. Maybe we'll see Phair's literary debut in the fourth quarter of 2010?

-- Charlie Amter

Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images