Essays & Biographies

Critical Essays

Drama, Script, Theatre, Performance

Richard Schechner
Drama Review, 17, September 1973, 5-36

Critical Essays

Defusion of Menace in Plays of Sam Shepard

Charles R. Bachman
Modern Drama, 19, December 1976, 405-16

Critical Essays

Alphabetical Shepard: The Play of Words

Bonnie Marranca
Performing Arts Publications, 1981, 13-33

Literary Studies

American Dreams: The Imagination of Sam Shepard

Bonnie Marranca
New York
Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1981

Critical Essays

Sam Shepard: Escape Artist

Ross Wetzsteon
Partisan Review, 49 / 2, 1982, 253-61

Critical Essays

Rock n’ Roll Jesus with a Cowboy Mouth: Sam Shepard Is the Inkblot of the 80’s

John Lion
American Theatre, I, April 1984, 4-8

Literary Studies

Inner Landscapes: The Theater of Sam Shepard

Ron Mottram
Columbia
University of Missouri Press, 1984

Literary Studies

Sam Shepard

Vivian M. Patraka and Mark Siegel
Boise
State University Press, 1985

Biographies

Sam Shepard: The Life and Work of an American Dreamer

Ellen Oumano
New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1986

Literary Studies

Von Cowboys bis True West: Sam Shepard’s Dramen

Michael Krekel
New York
Lang, 1986

Critical Essays

Shifting Perspectives: Combining Shepard and Rauschenberg

Jay Gibson Cima
Theatre Journal, 38 / I, 1986, 67-81

Literary Studies

Sam Shepard’s Metaphorical Stages

Lynda Hart
Westport, Conn.
Greenwood Press, 1987

Literary Studies

Sam Shepard: A Casebook

Kimball King
New York
Garland, 1988

Literary Studies

Die Tyrannei der Bilder: Sam Shepard’s Dramen

Ulrich Adolphs
New York
Lang, 1990

Critical Essays

Sam Shepard and the Dysfunctional American Family: Therapeutic Perspectives

Landy F. Sparr
American Journal of Psychotherapy, 44, October 1990, 563-76

Literary Studies

El Teatro de Sam Shepard: de Imágenes a Personajes

Isaac Chocrón
Caracas, Venezuela
Monte Avila, 1991

Critical Essays

Two Opposite Animals: Structural Pairing in Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind

Gregory W. Lanier
Modern Drama, 34, September 1991, 410-21

Literary Studies

Sam Shepard

Martin Tucker
New York
Continuum, 1992

Literary Studies

A Reconstruction-Analysis of “Buried Child” by Playwright Sam Shepard

Frederick J. Perry
Lewiston, NY
Edwin Mellen, 1992

Literary Studies

Sam Shepard

David J. DeRose
New York
Twayne, 1992

Biographies

Sam Shepard

Martin Tucker
New York, Continuum, 1992

Critical Essays

Shepard’s Plays: Stylistic and Thematic Ties

Robert B. Heilman
Sewanee Review , 100 / 4, Fall 1992, 630-44

Critical Essays

A Worm in the Wood: The Father-Son Relationship in the Plays of Sam Shepard

Henry I. Schvey
Modern Drama, 36, March 1993, 12-26

Literary Studies

Sam Shepard on the German Stage: Critics, Politics, Myths.

Carol Benet
New York
Peter Lang, 1993

Critical Essays

States of War in Sam Shepard’s States of Shock

Susanne Willadt
Modern Drama, 36 / 1, March 1993, 147-66

Literary Studies

True Lies: The Architecture of the Fantastic in the Plays of Sam Shepard

Jim McGee
New York
Lang, 1993

Critical Essays

Cain, Canaanites, and Philistines in Sam Shepard’s True West

Jeffrey D. Hoeper
Modern Drama, 36, March 1993, 76-82

Literary Studies

Rereading Shepard: Contemporary Critical Essays on the Plays of Sam Shepard

Leonard Wilcox
New York
St. Martin’s Press, 1993

Critical Essays

An American Cowboy on the English Fringe: Sam Shepard’s London Audience

Steven Putzel
Modern Drama, 36, March 1993, 131-46

Critical Essays

American Clocks: Sam Shepard’s Time Plays

Enoch Brater
Modern Drama, 37, Winter 1994, 603-12

Literary Studies

Sam Shepard: Theme, Image, and the Director

Laura J. Graham
New York
Lang, 1995

Biographies

Sam Shepard

Don Shewey
New York, Da Capo Press, 1997

Literary Studies

From Middleton and Rowley’s “Changeling” to Sam Shepard’s “Bodyguard”: A Contemporary Appropriation of a Renaissance Drama

Johan Callens
Lewiston, NY
Edwin Mellen, 1997

Critical Essays

Nowhere Man and the Twentieth-Century Cowboy: Images of Identity and American History in Sam Shepard’s True West

Megan Williams
Modern Drama, 40 / 1, Spring 1997, 57-73

Literary Studies

Sam Shepard and the American Theatre

Leslie Wade
Westport, Conn.
Greenwood Press, 1997

Critical Essays

Images of Women in Shepard’s Theatre

Charles G. Whiting
Modern Drama, 33 / 4, December 1997, 494-506

Literary Studies

Sam Shepard: Between the Margin and the Center – Parts I and II

ed. Johan Callens
New York
Harwood Academic, 1998

Critical Essays

Staging ‘Things’: Realism and the Theatrical Object in Shepard’s Theatre

Stanton B. Garner Jr.
Contemporary Theatre Review, 8 / 3, 1998, 55-66

Literary Studies

The Theatre of Sam Shepard; States of Crisis

Stephen J. Bottom
New York
Cambridge University Press, 1998

Critical Essays

Indian Country: Sam Shepard and the Cultural Other

David J DeRose
Contemporary Theatre Review, 8 / 4, 1998, 55-73

Literary Studies

A Body across the Map: The Father-Son Plays of Sam Shepard

Michael Taav
New York
Lang, 2000

Literary Studies

The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard

ed. Matthew Roudané
Cambridge
University Printing House, 2002

Literary Studies

Sam Shepard. Bloom’s Major Dramatists

ed. Harold Bloom
Philadelphia
Chelsea House, 2003

Literary Studies

Sam Shepard; A “Poetic Rodeo”

Carol Rosen
New York
Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2004

Critical Essays

Negotiating the American West in Sam Shepard’s Family Plays

J. Chris Westgate
Modern Drama, 48, Winter 2005, 726-43

Critical Essays

Sam Shepard’s Anti-Western Silent Tongue as Cultural Critique

Sandra Wynands
Canadian Review of American Studies, 35 / 3, 2005, 299-313

Critical Essays

Artistic Expression, Intimacy and the Primal Holon: Sam Shepard’s Suicide in B-flat and Tooth of Crime

William S. Haney, II
disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory, 15 / 1, 2006, 71-92

Literary Studies

Dis/figuring Sam Shepard

Johan Callens
New York
Lang, 2007

Critical Essays

There Is No Place Like Home: American Affirmation in Sam Shepard’s Unseen Hand

Darl Larsen
Journal of Popular Culture, 42, October 2009, 875-89

Critical Essays

Shhhhhhame: Silencing the Family Secret in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child

Benjamin Opipari
Style, 44, Spring/Summer 2010, 123-38

Literary Studies

Understanding Sam Shepard

James A. Crank
Columbia
University of South Carolina Press, 2012

Biographies

Sam Shepard: A Life

John J. Winters
Counterpoint; Reprint edition (March 20, 2018)