Books Written by Patti Smith

More than twenty, depending on what you count. Thirteen are covered in full on this page. The full list includes ten books of poetry, seven of prose and memoir, three of photographs and two of lyrics. Some bibliographies add Canzoni (1979) and Wild Leaves, which I have left out because I could not verify either to a publisher.

Seventh Heaven (1972), Kodak (1972), Early Morning Dream (1972), A Useless Death (1972), Witt (1973), The Night (1976), Ha! Ha! Houdini! (1977), Babel (1978), Woolgathering (1992), Early Work (1994), The Coral Sea (1996), Patti Smith Complete (1998), Strange Messenger (2003), Auguries of Innocence (2005), Land 250 (2008), Just Kids (2010), M Train (2015), Collected Lyrics (2015), Devotion (2017), Year of the Monkey (2019), A Book of Days (2022) and Bread of Angels (2025).

Just Kids (2010). It assumes nothing, it is the one that won the National Book Award, and it is the clearest thing she has written. M Train (2015) next if you liked the voice more than the story.

Yes. Seventh Heaven was published in 1972 and Horses came out in 1975. She was giving poetry readings in New York before the band existed, and the band grew out of those readings.

The National Book Award for Nonfiction, in 2010. Not memoir and not biography — there is no such category. The publisher of record was Ecco.

She married Fred “Sonic” Smith in 1980, moved to Michigan and withdrew from public life to raise her children. No book of hers appeared between Babel in 1978 and Woolgathering in 1992. She was writing during those years; she was not publishing.

Nothing, on purpose. A year of cafes, coffee, television detective shows, visits to the graves of writers she admires, and a broken-down house at Rockaway Beach, with her own Polaroids throughout. Her husband ’s death runs underneath it without ever being the subject.

Yes. Bread of Angels, a memoir, was published by Random House on 4 November 2025, two hundred and eighty-eight pages, with a cover photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe.

A Book of Days (2022) is three hundred and sixty-six photographs with caption-length text. Land 250 (2008) and Strange Messenger (2003) are exhibition catalogues of her photographs, drawings and prints. All three are hers; none is a book you sit and read.

Very little for a long time. Babel (1978) was followed by twenty-seven years without a new collection, until Auguries of Innocence in 2005. Early Work (1994) is a gathering of the 1970s poems, not new work.

The photographer she met in New York in 1967 and lived with for years; the subject of Just Kids, which she wrote because he asked her to before he died in 1989. He made the covers of Kodak (1972), Witt (1973), Early Work (1994) and The Coral Sea (1996), and the cover photograph of Bread of Angels (2025).

She was born in Chicago on 30 December 1946 and grew up mainly in Deptford Township, New Jersey. She moved to New York in 1967, which is where Just Kids begins.

A short book from 2017, published by Yale in a series in which writers explain their own process. It contains a piece of fiction about a young skater and an essay about where that fiction came from. It is the most direct account she has given of how she writes.

The major ones are. Her reading of M Train was nominated for a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album. If you like her voice, the audiobooks are a real option rather than a compromise.

Patti Smith is an American singer, songwriter, poet and author, often called a pioneer of punk rock. She became famous with her debut album Horses (1975), was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, and won the National Book Award in 2010 for her memoir Just Kids.

Patti Smith was born on 30 December 1946 in Chicago, Illinois. As of October 2026 she is alive and 79 years old, turning 80 on 30 December 2026.

Patti Smith lives in New York City, where she returned after the death of her husband in 1994. She also owns an old house in Rockaway Beach, Queens, which she bought on impulse and writes about in M Train.

Patti Smith married the Detroit musician Fred “Sonic” Smith in 1980, and they lived in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. He died of a heart attack on 4 November 1994.

Yes. With Fred Smith she has two children, Jackson Smith (born 1982) and Jesse Paris Smith (born 1987). In Just Kids she also writes that she became pregnant at 19 and gave birth to a daughter in 1967, whom she placed for adoption because she felt she was not ready to raise a child.

No to both. John McEnroe has been married since 1997 to Patty Smyth, the singer of the band Scandal, a different person. Bruce Springsteen’s wife is his E Street Band bandmate Patti Scialfa, whom he married on 8 June 1991; Patti Smith’s link to Springsteen is the song “Because the Night”, which they wrote together.

“Because the Night” was co-written by Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen. The Patti Smith Group released it in 1978 on the album Easter, and it became her biggest hit, reaching No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 5 in the UK.

Patti Smith moved to New York in 1967 and, after a trip to Paris, moved into the Hotel Chelsea with Robert Mapplethorpe in 1969, taking its smallest room, 1017. She describes those years in Just Kids.

When Bob Dylan did not attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December 2016, Patti Smith performed on his behalf, singing his song “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”.

Yes. As of October 2026 she is still performing, combining concerts with talks about her memoir Bread of Angels. In 2025 she toured for the 50th anniversary of Horses.

Besides singing, Patti Smith plays guitar and clarinet. Her music is usually classed as punk and art rock, often mixed with spoken-word poetry.

Patti Smith was raised a Jehovah’s Witness; in a 1973 interview she described her mother as deeply religious. She left organised religion as a teenager, and her early poem “Oath”, which grew into the song “Gloria”, was a rejection of that upbringing.