M Train is a memoir told in fourteen ‘stations’. Beginning in a Greenwich Village Caf. where Smith takes up residence, writing, drinking coffee, ruminating on the world as it is and the world as it was. In homage to the writers she treasures, Smith travels to the graves of Genet, Rimbaud and Mishima. Itinerant photographer, she documents her travels with exquisite Polaroids of artists’ totems- Bolano’s chair, Kahlo’s crutches, Virginia Woolf’s walking stick. Woven throughout are conversations on the writer’s craft with an astral cowpoke and memories of a distant life in Michigan with her husband Fred Sonic Smith. A meditation on loss, a call to life, M Train is a poetic tour de force.

Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids was a number one New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller and awarded the National Book Award for non-fiction in 2010. She is the recipient of the Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and The Polar Award. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 and received ASCAP’s Founders Award for a Lifetime Achievement in 2010. She lives in New York.