Patti Smith 9/19/16 Sprague Hall Yale

Keynote speaker for the literary Windham-Campbell prize, Patti Smith is a breath of fresh air in the land of pomp and circumstance known as Yale University. A true Renaissance woman, Smith has given to music: the seminal records Horses, Easter, and Dancing Barefoot; literature: critically acclaimed Just Kids ( concerning her early years with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe), M-train, and Woolgathering; and photography, her show of black and whites at the Wadsworth Atheneum was fantastic. Smith's talk was centered on "why I write", which morphed into "how I write". She read a passage from an unfinished work titled "Devotion", then described real life situations that evolved into the fabric of this fictional work. Patti Smith is a monumental artist who comes across so humble and real.