Happy Birthday, Patti Smith

Born December 30, 1946, Chicago, IL

Today, the Best American Essays newsletter celebrates the seventy-eighth birthday of songwriter/performer, poet, painter, photographer, and nonfiction author Patti Smith. Recipient of the National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids, Smith has received many accolades and honors for a variety creative endeavors.

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Patti Smith performing at Cornell University in 1978.

Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all.

Patti Smith at the Venice Film Festival, 2024, Harald Krichel.

Why can’t I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.

Patti Smith’s first memoir was Just Kids (2010), depicting her early days in late 1960s New York City and her relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. M Train (2015) comprises meditations on love, loss, and art. In The Year of the Monkey, Smith chronicles a year spent traveling alone.

First published nonfiction book:

Just Kids, Ecco Press, 2010.

Select nonfiction bibliography:

• M Train, Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

• Devotion, Yale University Press, 2017.

• Year of the Monkey, Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

See also:

Read Patti Smith’s Substack newsletter.

Visit Patti’s Smith’s website

Watch Patti Smith read from Virginia Woolf, Open Culture, 2024.

Read an interview with Patti Smith, Harvard Business Review, 2023.

Read an interview with Patti Smith, The Guardian, 2016.

Watch an interview with Patti Smith, PBS, 1997.