Author Guide · Documentary Theatre
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In August 1991 a car in a Hasidic rabbi’s motorcade killed a seven-year-old Black boy, Gavin Cato, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; hours later a young Jewish scholar, Yankel Rosenbaum, was stabbed to death. Anna Deavere Smith, an actress born in Baltimore in 1950, went there with a tape recorder, interviewed the people on every side, and then played 26 of them herself, word for word, in Fires in the Mirror. She has worked the same way ever since: the Los Angeles riots of 1992, the American presidency, health care, schools and prisons. Her plays are published as books, and she has written two books about listening and making art. This guide covers her six key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 key books · 1993–2019 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Anna Deavere Smith’s best-known books are the documentary plays Fires in the Mirror (1993), about the 1991 Crown Heights riots, and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994), about the riots after the Rodney King verdict. Later came Talk to Me (2000), House Arrest and Piano (2004), Letters to a Young Artist (2006) and Notes from the Field (2019). Start with Twilight; the guide below explains what each book does and how her method works.
Where to Start with Anna Deavere Smith
If you want her defining work
→ Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994) — Los Angeles in 1992, from the police chief to the people on the street.
If you want the play that started it all
→ Fires in the Mirror (1993) — Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 26 voices.
If you want to understand her method
→ Talk to Me (2000) — how she listens, in her own words.
If you want her most recent work
→ Notes from the Field (2019) — the same method turned on schools and prisons.
6 Anna Deavere Smith Books, in Order
Fires in the Mirror
Built from interviews after the Crown Heights riots of August 1991, when the death of Gavin Cato and the killing of Yankel Rosenbaum set Black and Lubavitcher Jewish neighbours against each other. Smith first performed it in New York in 1992, playing 26 people, from residents and activists to the Reverend Al Sharpton. It was a finalist for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was filmed for PBS’s American Playhouse in 1993.
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992
The riots that followed the April 1992 acquittal of four police officers in the beating of Rodney King, told through the words of the people Smith interviewed afterwards: residents, shop owners, police, politicians and gang members. It premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and ran on Broadway in 1994, where it was nominated for the Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Actress. Marc Levin directed a film version with Smith that came out in 2000.
Talk to Me
Part memoir, part account of her technique, written while she was researching House Arrest, her play about the presidency and the press. She travels from the 1996 party conventions to a women’s prison in Maryland and the Oval Office, where she interviewed Bill Clinton in 1997. The 2001 paperback is subtitled Travels in Media and Politics.
House Arrest and Piano
Two plays in one volume. House Arrest is a documentary play about American presidents and the people who watch them, moving from Clinton and Monica Lewinsky back to Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Piano is a scripted drama set in a wealthy Cuban household on the eve of the Spanish–American War, about race, sex and exploitation.
Letters to a Young Artist
Advice to people starting out in the arts, written as letters to a young artist. Smith covers the practical side of a creative life as well as the work itself, drawing on her own career as an actor, playwright and teacher.
Notes from the Field
A play about the school-to-prison pipeline: how poor students and students of colour are pushed out of classrooms and towards incarceration. Smith interviewed some 250 people and kept about 20, among them Niya Kenny, a student arrested after confronting a school deputy, and Bree Newsome, who took down the Confederate flag at the South Carolina State House. HBO broadcast a filmed performance in February 2018; the book followed in 2019.
In What Order to Read Anna Deavere Smith
Her plays stand alone, so you can read them in any order. Publication order shows how the method grew: from one neighbourhood in Fires in the Mirror to a whole city in Twilight, then to institutions, the presidency in House Arrest and the school system in Notes from the Field.
Read the two prose books after at least one play. Talk to Me makes more sense once you have seen what her listening produces on the page, and Letters to a Young Artist is aimed mainly at readers who make art themselves.
A reading path
1. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994)
2. Fires in the Mirror (1993)
3. Talk to Me (2000)
4. Notes from the Field (2019)
Everything Else Anna Deavere Smith Published
Beyond the 6 key books: 1 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Acting editions
1
1 book · 2016
- 2016Let Me Down Easyher documentary play about the body, illness and health care, premiered in 2008; published as an acting edition by Dramatists Play Service
The years · 1950–2019
Quick facts about Anna Deavere Smith
- Known for
- Inventing a form of documentary theatre in which she interviews hundreds of people around a crisis and then performs them herself, word for word.
- 1950
- Born in Baltimore, Maryland
- 1977
- MFA from the American Conservatory Theater
- 2015
- Gives the Jefferson Lecture in Washington
- 2019
- Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Born
- 18 September 1950, Baltimore, Maryland
- Education
- BA in linguistics, Beaver College (now Arcadia University), 1971; MFA, American Conservatory Theater, 1977
- Teaches
- New York University since 2000, after posts at Carnegie Mellon, USC and Stanford
- Stage
- Pulitzer finalist for Fires in the Mirror (1993); two Tony nominations for Twilight (1994)
- Honours
- MacArthur Fellowship (1996), National Humanities Medal (2012), NEH Jefferson Lecture (2015)
- On screen
- Philadelphia, The American President, The West Wing, Nurse Jackie
The red mark is 1994: Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 opens on Broadway and is published as a book.
How Anna Deavere Smith Writes: Other People’s Words
Smith does not invent dialogue. She records interviews, sometimes hundreds for a single play, chooses the voices that matter, and then performs them exactly as spoken, with the repetitions, pauses and broken sentences left in. She traces the idea to her grandfather, who told her: “If you say a word often enough it becomes you.” For Notes from the Field she interviewed about 250 people and kept around 20. Of the process she has said: “I’m like a cow. I gather all this stuff, and then I just sit around and chew it.”
Her subjects are moments when a community splits: Crown Heights in 1991, Los Angeles in 1992. Instead of choosing a side, she puts the opposing sides next to each other, often a few minutes apart, and lets the audience hear how each describes the same events. The series these plays belong to is called On the Road: A Search for American Character, a project she began while teaching at Carnegie Mellon in the late 1970s.
On the page, the plays are set out like verse, line by line as people spoke, which makes them quick to read. Her two prose books, Talk to Me and Letters to a Young Artist, explain the thinking behind the work. For writers who also build the truth out of other people’s words, from Studs Terkel to Svetlana Alexievich, see Authors like Anna Deavere Smith.
Watch
Anna Deavere Smith in conversation
Smith talks with David M. Rubenstein at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October 2019, after giving the academy’s annual Rubenstein Lecture.
Frequently asked questions about Anna Deavere Smith’s books
How many books has Anna Deavere Smith written?
Six key books, the ones on this page: four volumes of plays (Fires in the Mirror, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, House Arrest and Piano and Notes from the Field) and two works of nonfiction (Talk to Me and Letters to a Young Artist). Her play Let Me Down Easy is available as an acting edition (2016).
What are Anna Deavere Smith’s books in order?
Fires in the Mirror (1993), Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994), Talk to Me (2000), House Arrest and Piano (2004), Letters to a Young Artist (2006) and Notes from the Field (2019).
What is the best Anna Deavere Smith work to start with?
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 — her best-known play and the clearest introduction to her documentary theatre technique. If you prefer something shorter and more focused, Fires in the Mirror uses the same method on one Brooklyn neighbourhood.
What is Anna Deavere Smith’s most famous work?
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, about the riots after the Rodney King verdict, which ran on Broadway in 1994 and earned two Tony nominations. Fires in the Mirror, about the 1991 Crown Heights riots, is the other play she is best known for.
What is Anna Deavere Smith’s performance method called?
Documentary or verbatim theatre. She interviews many people around a social crisis, then performs their own words exactly as spoken, playing dozens of real people herself in a solo show. Her plays form a series called On the Road: A Search for American Character.
Did Anna Deavere Smith win a Pulitzer Prize?
No. Fires in the Mirror was a finalist for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 was nominated for the 1994 Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Actress in a Play. She has won two Obie Awards and a MacArthur Fellowship (1996).
Have Anna Deavere Smith’s plays been filmed?
Yes. Fires in the Mirror was filmed for PBS’s American Playhouse in 1993, directed by George C. Wolfe; Twilight: Los Angeles became a film directed by Marc Levin in 2000; and HBO broadcast Notes from the Field in February 2018. In each she plays all the roles herself.
Is Anna Deavere Smith also an actress?
Yes, she trained as an actor and still performs her own plays. On screen she has appeared in films such as Philadelphia and The American President and in the television series The West Wing, Nurse Jackie and Black-ish.
Is Anna Deavere Smith still alive?
Yes. She was born on 18 September 1950 in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a University Professor at New York University, where she has taught since 2000, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.
What is Talk to Me by Anna Deavere Smith about?
It is part memoir and part explanation of her method: how she listens, and what people’s language reveals about them. It draws on the research for House Arrest, including the 1996 party conventions, a women’s prison in Maryland and an interview with Bill Clinton in the Oval Office in 1997.
Footnotes
- Anna Deavere Smith — Encyclopædia Britannica
- Fires in the Mirror, 1993 finalist in Drama — The Pulitzer Prizes
- Anna Deavere Smith — Internet Broadway Database
- Anna Deavere Smith to deliver 44th Jefferson Lecture — National Endowment for the Humanities, 2015
- Notes from the Field — Penguin Random House
- HBO to broadcast Notes From the Field — Andscape, 2018
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all hers.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“What I’m trying to do is reach for that which is not me.”
— Anna Deavere Smith, quoted in Inside Higher Ed at her NEH Jefferson Lecture (2015)
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