Alternative rock icon Kristin Hersh has always been paradoxically open about her overwhelming shyness. But this shyness wasn't enough to stop her from famously forming the group Throwing Muses when she was just a teenager. And it wasn't enough to keep her from deciding that it was time to look back on a career of more than two decades of performing with not only the Muses, but her solo career and her power trio 50 Foot Wave, as well as side interests that include running her own record label and writing and illustrating children's books.

Hersh will perform Paradoxical Undressing, a live spoken word project that will feature excerpts from Hersh's upcoming memoir of the same name, June 6 at the Detroit Institute Of Arts. The performance will also feature musical accompaniment, essays and projected images. Paradoxical Undressing, which takes its name from the unexplained removal of clothing and blankets by people with hypothermia, will touch upon not only Hersh's career, but mental illness, teenage pregnancy and the inner-workings of the 1980s-90s music scene.

"For some reason," Hersh tells us, "a handful of writers approached me last year asking for permission to write my biography or ghost-write a memoir. I thought it was very sweet and said something like 'Sure!' to all of them, until they told me that it would mean hours and hours of interviews, which means I would have to talk out loud! As a shy person, I find this very difficult, so I offered to write my own memoir, something I didn't think I would do until I was, I don't know, dead or something. But I've enjoyed the writing a ton."

For more of our chat with the Muse, click here.

- Michael Tedder, CMJ.com