Smith was interviewed for the 1995 bookNever Mind the Bollocks: Women Rewrite Rock by Amy Raphael (published in the US asGrrrls: Viva Rock Divas).[11][12] She was also interviewed and quoted for the bookFrock Rock: Women Performing Popular Music, a sociological study of women musicians in British popular music; at the time of the interview she was in Echobelly, and the book notes thatSkin andYolanda Charles both said that Smith was the only current black British female guitarist either one of them could think of.[13]Frock Rock says that "women like Skin,Natacha Atlas, Yolanda Charles, Mary Genis, and Debbie Smith are now acting as crucial role models for future generations of black women."[13]
In 1997, Debbie Smith was the subject of the third episode of a TV series with the blanket titleA Woman Called Smith (first broadcast onBBC2, 9 April 1997).[14]
Smith is a lesbian,[2][15] and appears in a 2021 documentary film,Rebel Dykes,[16][17][18] about the 1980s London dyke community; at that point in time she was in feminist lesbian post-punk band Mouth Almighty. She continues to perform as guitarist and DJ, and works at London music shop Intoxica! Records.[8][19][20]
^Debbie Smith interview as featured in a 2021 film by Harri Shanahan and Sian A Williams, with a Channel 4 television premiere on 28 June 2022 at 1:05am: a rousing and detailed documentary uncovering the unheard story of post-punk lesbian feminism in the 1980s, told through archive footage, interviews and animation.
