She worked until the end of her life, and it sounds like we might soon get to hear what she was working on.
On August 25, 2026, Dolly Parton sadly passed away at 80-years-old in Nashville Tennessee. Dolly had been dealing with undisclosed health issues for the last year or so, and she previously shared that she was having issues with severe kidney stones. Dolly’s reps confirmed she sadly died following a “brief battle with cancer,” though the specific kind was not revealed.
From her SongTeller hotel and Life Of Many Colors museum in Nashville, to her Broadway musical set to debut in New York City early next year, as well as a multi-content festival, Dolly had many irons in the fire, so to speak, as she always did, and around the time of her passing, Dolly’s manager Danny Nozell said that Dolly had been working “up until the day she died.”
He added that anything released by the Estate in the coming months and years were things Dolly was working on, explaining that fans can “have confidence in knowing that she placed her personal stamp on it”:
“Dolly worked up until the day she died. She loved seeing her dreams come to life, and loved knowing her work brought people joy. Ever the planner, Dolly worked with the team that she handpicked, for the past several years to build a project roadmap that will guide us for decades to come.
Many projects were in various stages of development, and we want to be transparent with her fans about this fact. If you see unreleased music, products, books, experiences, and campaigns launched through official Dolly Parton channels, you can have confidence in knowing that she placed her personal stamp on it.”
According to Page Six Hollywood, Dolly had been working on a memoir too, which was reportedly sold for $13 million “in a wild, heated bidding war,” a source revealed to the outlet.
The book was purchased by Grand Central Publishing, and many of the details around the book remain undisclosed. There are no further details on when it was written, what the subject matter is or anything of that nature, but of course, with it being the last book she’ll ever write, it’s going to be huge and I can’t wait to learn more about it.
A source told Page Six that “when the agency told publishers it had a $12 million offer”:
“No one believed them, so they all stopped bidding [and] Folio went back to editors.”
Another source added:
“They were all like, ‘WTF? You have $12 million, and we aren’t beating that.”
Ultimately, Grand Central won out on the bidding war, though Parton’s estate, nor the publisher, have commented or confirmed the news separately yet.
Dolly wrote seven books throughout her life, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business in 1994, Just the Way I Am in 1979, Dream More: Celebrate the Dreamer in You in 2012, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics in 2020, Run, Rose, Run in 2022, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones in 2023 and most recently, Good Lookin’ Cookin’: A Year of Meals – A Lifetime of Family, Friends, and Food in 2023, in addition to some children’s books and other things of that nature,
Dolly had such an incredible life, and while she was struggling quite a bit health-wise at the end, her work ethic didn’t seem to slow down at all, which is just beyond impressive. In a couple of weeks, U2 will release the final song she ever recorded on November 13th as part of their new album, Carnaval de Luz. She recorded the album’s closer, “Torn,” in June, and Bono recently said that even though Dolly was very sick, she “got out of bed” to follow through and record it for them, and he says he “can’t even listen to it now”:
“When she got ill, she got out of her bed to sing this song. And you can hear that. And I can’t even listen to it now.”
I already know it’s going to be incredible, everything she ever did was, and hopefully it won’t be too long before we get more details on the memoir, as well.
